Interagency Data Sharing

About the Office of Data Governance and Analytics (ODGA)   

The ODGA partners with Commonwealth agencies and public institutions to maximize the value of Commonwealth data through strategic governance, secure and appropriate data sharing, and enterprise analytics services informing actionable intelligence. The office is led by the Chief Data Officer for the Commonwealth of Virginia and is made up of a team full of talented professionals.   

 

What prompted the collaboration of the DBHDS with the ODGA?  

The Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services (DBHDS) requires data from The Department of Medical Assistance Services (DMAS) to fulfill data requirements for high priority, ad hoc Department of Justice (DOJ) report requests. The goal of the project was to streamline the use of DMAS’s data warehouse data to generate recurring DOJ reports and ad hoc reports as needed by DBHDS.  

 

Project: 

The Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services (DBHDS) and the Department of Medical Assistance Services (DMAS) use the Commonwealth Data Trust to manage data sharing for Medicare justice reports from DMAS. DMAS data is needed by DBHDS to fulfill the data requirements for a Department of Justice Settlement agreement. The Commonwealth Data Trust allows DBHDS to meet requirements without putting any strain on the agency and thus removing the silo between the two agencies. Eight Department of Justice reports are created monthly and delivered to DBHDS via Excel reports. This process was created by the ODGA team for DBHDS so it could be automated and self-service. In addition to this, a data mart was created so that DBHDS can access and query/analyze the data at any time. 

 

Feedback:  

The team at DBHDS highlighted that ODGA’s automated reporting solution has saved their team time, taking the process from a ten-day process to a two-day process. DBHDS Commissioner Nelson Smith praised ODGA’s work on this project, stating:  

 

“DBHDS has benefited greatly from its partnership with ODGA.  The data sharing through ODGA has streamlined report requests and data needs extensively to ensure we have timely access to data to assess service utilization and gaps in the system for future development.  Its assistance has proven critical to DBHDS meeting its requirements.”