Transportation Department Considering Data Governance Solution

In a Request for Information (RFI) released Jan. 11, the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) seeks assistance from technology companies in charting the course of a Enterprise Data Governance Technology Solution (EDGTS) Project. The RFI, which cautions it is a survey, not a solicitation, comes from Caltrans’ Division of Procurement and Contracts on behalf of the Information Technology Project Management Office and the Enterprise Data and Geospatial Governance Program. Among the takeaways:

• Caltrans manages more than 50,000 lane miles of state and federal highways; it permits more than 400 airports and runs three of the top five Amtrak intercity rail services, according to the RFI. Its Caltrans Data is Authoritative, Trusted and Accessible (CTDATA) Program lets the department do more to make accurate data readily available to support “analysis and decision-making,” for itself and its partners. “In a nutshell, the Vision for Enterprise Data Governance is to provide the right information to the right people at the right time,” the RFI said. EDGTS’ vision is, similarly, “to provide reliable, accessible, shareable and quality-controlled data for use by Caltrans and its partners.” To achieve this, the agency seeks a solution to “provide technical data governance capabilities that when coupled with defined roles, responsibilities and processes becomes the foundation of a sustainable enterprise data governance approach.”
  “The purpose of this RFI is to collect information that will assist Caltrans in understanding the technologies and approaches that can achieve its vision. A viable solution identified through this process may provide all of the capabilities defined in this RFI or only a subset,” Caltrans said in the document.
• The department envisions a commercial off-the-shelf or modified off-the-shelf solution to address requirements in functional categories including data dictionary management — managing information on “the specific data elements or fields in a data set or database”; metadata management — managing data that describes an entire database; and data catalog management of “the list of corporate databases and data sets based on metadata, topics and/or keywords.”
• For the project, Caltrans chose 10 “representative systems” to assist in defining use cases and requirements for a possible enterprise data governance solution. These included the Division of Accounting’s Oracle-platformed Advantage Financial Management System, which delivers enterprise-wide financial and procurement services; and the California Transportation Commission’s MySQL-based California State Multi-Modal Accountability and Reporting Tool (CalSMART), which supports aspects of Senate Bill 1. Other systems included the Division of Research, Innovation and System Information’s Oracle/SQL Server-based Linear Referencing System, which maintains a geospatial, GIS data set based on system data; and the Division of Engineering Services’ FileMaker Pro-based Office Engineer Database, which tracks construction projects.
• The project’s term and cost are unclear; Caltrans seeks “rough order of magnitude” cost estimates from respondents.  Responses are due by 12 p.m. Jan. 29. Demonstrations, which will be scheduled after the receipt of responses, are planned for Feb. 22 - March 5.