The Government of the District of Columbia continues its strategic investment in data as a critical asset to support the government, residents, and businesses of Washington, D.C. These investments have proven to be invaluable for Mayoral initiatives, data driven decision making, increasing transparency, and more efficient use and sharing of government data. Making data better through technology, processes, and people, alongside policy, has allowed the District Government to work more cohesively when collecting, integrating, analyzing, and governing its data. This results in improving how the government delivers valuable District services for residents.

In 2024, our data programs continued to provide high value in the city's effort to enhance and improve digital services for District agencies, residents, and businesses including:

• Making strategic investments in the platforms we use to exchange and analyze data; using our framework data to advance the quality of our data-driven outcomes.
• Assisting agencies with artificial intelligence. We are balancing the benefits of improving government services that impact the lives of residents and businesses; while also mitigating risks in cybersecurity, privacy and sustainability. The tools and solutions we look to deploy as a government are only as good as the underlying data that powers the models behind them. Therefore, focusing on producing and maintaining high quality data is key to implementing effective generative AI.
• Forming new partnerships with agencies that help modernize their data systems and infrastructure. This results in new ways to integrate disparate, real-time, and complex datasets used to produce successful outcomes in line with their missions.
• Working towards closing the digital divide through efforts to increase access to affordable broadband across all eight wards. Data helps identify the true landscape of the digital divide where the District can then provide resources to support those who lack what today is considered a necessary utility.
• Focusing on training the District workforce to become better informed users and stewards of data. This allows for better data collection, curation, maintenance, and decision making using available enterprise tools.