By:
Neal S. Wolin and Todd Park
Data sets published by Federal agencies are increasingly
being harnessed by private-sector innovators to empower consumers to take
control of their financial lives. Recently, Treasury hosted a Finance Data
Convening (webcast
link) and Working Session to highlight the variety of features, apps,
products, and services that use finance data released by Federal agencies. Senior officials from the White House,
Treasury, the IRS, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the
Department of Labor, the Social Security Administration, and the SEC joined
over 50 private-sector leaders for a day devoted to data and innovation.
We’ve already seen innovation driven by freely available
government data in other sectors. As just
one example, entrepreneurs have used data from the U.S. Global Positioning
System (GPS) to power navigation systems, build precision crop farming tools,
and launch other innovations that add more than $90 billion per year in value
to the American economy. The Obama
Administration has launched a series of Open Data Initiatives—in education, energy,
health, and public safety—to help catalyze the development of innovative apps
and services fueled by open data, while rigorously protecting privacy and confidentiality. Open data in these sectors is spawning new
businesses that promote economic growth, create jobs, and generate new value
for American consumers.
New value for consumers is also being created in financial
services, where easily accessible Federal data is increasingly playing a role
in the development of apps and services that help consumers make more informed
financial decisions. At Treasury’s
Finance Data Convening, companies demonstrated a number of innovative services that
use Federal data, including:
- An online platform for
investors using SEC data on public company financial statements and mutual
funds.
- A service that rates
401(k) plans using data on employer-sponsored retirement plans from the
Department of Labor.
- A tool that analyzes
credit and debit card transactions for suspicious charges using credit
card complaint data from the CFPB.
- An online small business lending
startup that mashes up data from different government sources and uses big-data
analytics to make working capital loans to small businesses.
Agency officials participating in the Finance Data Convening
spoke about valuable finance data sets that are freely available to the public—some
of which are already being used to create products that empower consumers. Then, during the Working Session that
followed the convening, participants worked to identify a list of ideas for new
features, products, services, and applications that could make use of these and
other Federal data sets. For an overview
of these finance data sets, please visit Treasury’s Finance Data Directory, which
includes over 50 major finance data sets published by Federal agencies.
These events were part of the Obama Administration’s ongoing
Finance Data Initiative, an effort to foster dialogue and to promote the
availability of Federal finance data that innovators can use to create tools
and products that help Americans assert control over their financial lives. If you have an idea or an example of an
innovation (a product, service, website, app, or feature) that uses open data
as an input, send an email to financedata@treasury.gov
or tweet at @USTreasury with the
hashtag #financedata.
Neal S. Wolin is Deputy Secretary, Department of the Treasury and Todd Park is Assistant to the President and U.S. Chief Technology
Officer.