Georgia's Joint Agency Data Acquisition and Management Program

Overview

Over a period of more than 4 years, the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) and Atlanta Reginal Commission (ARC) have been teaming together to develop and implement a comprehensive interagency data acquisition and management program. By reducing unnecessarily data duplication, providing more powerful and standardized analytics tools, and purchasing in bulk, GDOT and ARC conservatively estimate an annual savings of $3.9 million. Additionally, the comprehensive interagency data acquisition and management program has helped position both agencies to better address their agency-wide goals.

In this case study you will learn:

1. How Georgia DOT And Atlanta Regional Commission worked together to determine data needs and overlaps in TSMO
2. How by reducing unnecessarily data duplication, providing more powerful and standardized analytics tools, and purchasing in bulk the program could reduce overall costs
3. How the working group created long term success and buy-in by creating a written program charter agreement to memorialize their actions and motivations.

Background

Over a period of more than 4 years, the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) and Atlanta Reginal Commission (ARC) have been teaming together to develop and implement a comprehensive interagency data acquisition and management program. This program improves agency-wide capabilities, reduces costs, and assists local partners. In 2017 ARC engaged GDOT and other regional transportation agencies to obtain their input for several initiatives. This included updating the ITS architecture, initiating data governance procedures, and creating a TSMO Strategic Plan. The efforts established an initiative that focused on enhancing data sharing and management to support enhanced data collection, curation, access, and archiving capabilities for improved performance measure analysis and real-time systems management and operations. As ARC effort was finishing, GDOT’s Office of Traffic Operations took the lead in organizing Georgia’s input to The Eastern Transportation Coalition’s (TETC) data marketplace. GDOT felt it was important to provide not only TETC but also the data community a better understanding of the values, needs, and desires of Georgia. With the assistance of Arcadis, the Office of Traffic Operations held multiple workshops to solicit input from individual offices and teams at GDOT, ARC, and State Road and Tollway Authority. A Data Need Overlap Assessment was done and illustrations of the overwhelming overlapping needs between the groups. This information and associated interviews were compiled and delivered to the Coalition in late spring. The resources were shared with other state agencies who expressed a desire to complete the same activity.

TSMO Planning, Strategies and Deployment

Moving from analysis to action, the team identified opportunities for the agencies to improve. The team requested approval from ARC and GDOT’s executive leadership to create an interagency working group to develop a comprehensive and centralized data acquisition program in order to:

1. Enhance and standardize data analytics capabilities for ALL projects
2. Eliminate unnecessary duplication of data and associated analyses
3. Lower overall agency costs

On approval, the working group identified 3 immediate actions:

1. Develop an interagency program charter
2. Identify a funding plan
3. Develop guidelines and policy recommendations for data acquisitions

To ensure long-term success and buy-in, the working group created a written agreement to memorialize their actions and motivations. This took shape as a program charter. The program charter identified the scope and created the mechanisms for membership. The group determine it was valuable to ensure general membership and participation remained open to any member of a public agency, and it also required equal voting representation between both agencies. The voting representation was set at 3 members for ARC and GDOT each and also required that business units be limited to one voting member to ensure expansive representation. By way of example, GDOT’s voting members consist of individuals from the Offices of Planning, Traffic Operations, and Transportation Data.

To pay for the proposed program, the working group evaluated each agency’s data purchasing history. It was determined GDOT, and ARC expend considerable resources to acquire data, but they are inadvertently overlooked and inadequately catalogued. This was because datasets are often purchased as small data acquisitions by consulting firms through direct expenses on project-by-project basis. For example, a single consulting firm working on six GDOT contracts directly expensed approximately $250,000 over the course of one year for data acquisition. That data was subsequently never shared with the other groups within GDOT or ARC. It quickly became evident that by reducing unnecessarily data duplication, providing more powerful and standardized analytics tools, and purchasing in bulk the program could not only be cost neutral but could reduce overall costs. The group also began the process of developing guidelines and recommendations for data acquisition and management. As a starting point, the group determined that utilizing the principles developed by TETC would create a sustainable foundation. Similar to how agencies’ use national standards for signing and marking or road design, the group felt that this created a mechanism for consistency and ability to leverage national expertise while also providing flexibility for the state to strengthen specific requirements as needed. 

While still in development, the interagency guidelines and policy recommendations includes the following items:

1. Licensing requirements for personnel, interagency (including local agencies), and consultant usage
2. Data use and publishing permissions
3. Interagency gap analyses and best value assessments

Communications Planning and Execution

Implementation within the agencies took a tremendous amount of work. Both agencies expend considerable resources to acquire data on a project-by-project basis. The concept of purchasing and managing data on interagency was generally well-received, but it ultimately constituted a paradigm shift that needed ample communication. Utilizing the successes from GDOT’s previous big data rollout with Automated Traffic Signal Performance Measures, the interagency working group identified key stakeholders and began engaging. Through targeted efforts in trainings, presentations at local professional organizations, and regular user group meetings, the working group was able to educate and inform partners on the power this program would bring to their projects, maintenance, and operations. Additionally, the outreach and coordination allowed the working group to receive quality feedback from industry partners on additional opportunities for improvement. Upon completion of these activities, along with a program charter and funding proposal, the working group once again engaged ARC and GDOT’s executive leadership. The working group proposed dedicated annualized funding provided by both agencies specifically for statewide data acquisition and management.

In August 2021, the program was approved by both agencies with a 3-year budgetary phase-in of up to $5 million per year.

Outcome, Learnings and Public Benefit

By reducing unnecessarily data duplication, providing more powerful and standardized analytics tools, and purchasing in bulk, GDOT and ARC conservatively estimate an annual savings of $3.9 million. Additionally, the comprehensive interagency data acquisition and management program has helped position both agencies to better address their agency-wide goals. These include, but are not limited to:

1. Assist the implementation of most all the initiatives and associated primary actions outlined in ARC’s TSMO Strategic Plan
2. Data-driven ability to deviate from standards to create more practical, location-specific, and cost-effective designs.
3. Uniform data analysis capabilities, regardless of project size or budget.
4. Enhanced capabilities for project justification and visualization during public forums.
5. Position Georgia for rapid, statewide, low risk deployments of connected and autonomous vehicle technologies and applications
6. Direct cost savings for all statewide local agency and consultant partners.