[Federal Register Volume 87, Number 115 (Wednesday, June 15, 2022)]
[Notices]
[Pages 36151-36152]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2022-12510]



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DEPARTMENT OF LABOR

[Agency Docket Number: DOL-2022-0003]


Office of the Assistant Secretary for Policy; Request for 
Information on Design and Implementation Features for Open Data 
Services Provided by the Department of Labor

AGENCY: Office of the Assistant Secretary for Policy, Department of 
Labor.

ACTION: Request for information.

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SUMMARY: The Department is seeking public input in support of its open 
data efforts to ensure that expanding public access to Federal data 
will best reflect public interests, serve public needs, and continue to 
be customer focused, while protecting the confidentiality of its data 
providers.

DATES: Written comments must be submitted through the Federal 
eRulemaking Portal as described below on or before December 12, 2022.

ADDRESSES: You may submit electronic comments in the following way:
    Federal eRulemaking Portal: https://www.regulations.gov. Follow the 
instructions for submitting comments. Comments submitted 
electronically, including attachments, to https://www.regulations.gov 
will be posted to the docket unchanged. Because your comment will be 
made public, you are solely responsible for ensuring that your comment 
does not include any confidential information that you or a third party 
may not wish to be posted, such as personally identifying information, 
your or anyone else's Social Security number, or confidential business 
information, such as a manufacturing process. Please note that if you 
include your name, contact information, or other information that 
identifies you in the body of your comments, that information will be 
posted on https://www.regulations.gov.
    Instructions: All submissions received must include the Docket No. 
DOL-2021-0005 for ``Request for information on design and 
implementation features for open data services provided by the 
Department of Labor.'' Received comments, those filed in a timely 
manner (see DATES), will be placed in the docket and be publicly 
viewable at https://www.regulations.gov.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Scott Gibbons, Chief Data Officer, 
Office of the Assistant Secretary for Policy, U.S. Department of Labor, 
200 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20210, 
[email protected], 202-693-5075 (this is not a toll-free number), 
or for individuals with hearing or speech impairments, 1-877-889-5627 
(this is the TTY toll-free Federal Information Relay Service number).

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:

I. Background

    The Department of Labor (Department) is committed to fostering a 
strong, open data policy that provides simple and meaningful public 
access to data, in formats that are most useful for public consumption 
and analyses of the data. The Department's open data policy must also 
comply with the law, including protecting personal and private 
information subject to the Privacy Act. The Department's open data 
policy is also consistent with Secretary's Order (SO) 02-2019,\1\ the 
Federal Data Strategy,\2\ and the Foundations for Evidence-Based 
Policymaking Act of 2018 (Evidence Act).\3\
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    \1\ https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2019/03/26/2019-05720/secretarys-order-02-2019-chief-data-officer-and-dol-data-board.
    \2\ https://strategy.data.gov/.
    \3\ https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-115publ435/pdf/PLAW-115publ435.pdf.
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    SO 02-2019 provides the Department's framework for building data 
capacity and includes the following requirements:
     Identify the critical role that data play in informing and 
influencing how the Department carries out its mission, and acknowledge 
that these data need to be leveraged, housed, described and documented, 
formatted, and made public in an optimal manner;
     Formalize the Data Board as the Department's data 
governance body, and as a forum to work across organizational lines to 
collaborate and coordinate effectively on data strategy, management, 
and policy issues, as well as data governance, stewardship, 
architecture, and utilization;
     Provide Departmental programs with clear descriptions of 
the motivation, context, and values associated with data governance and 
data strategy by linking evidence-based policymaking with the need for 
modern data infrastructure and strengthened data capacity; and
     Task the Data Board and the Chief Data Officer with 
serving the needs of the Department and its stakeholders to focus on 
the quality, consistency, and availability of data.
    In addition, the Evidence Act and the recently published Federal 
Data Strategy have expanded the requirements for Federal agencies to 
build data capacity that benefits the public and to be transparent with 
their data assets. Examples of these expansions include Section 303 of 
the Evidence Act, which expands requirements for access to data for 
evidence and adds a presumption of accessibility to data, and Section 
202(b) of the Evidence Act, which includes guidance to make data open 
by default. In similar fashion, the Federal Data Strategy explicitly 
calls on agencies to identify priority data sets (Action 1) and to 
identify their initial list of priority data assets for agency open 
data plans (Action 5).
    Consistent with all of these requirements, the Department is 
building capacity for open data through the development of a new 
Application Programming Interface (API), and plans to provide open data 
through a data-as-a-service (DAAS) model. This model is expected to 
offer efficient, on-demand methods that enable users to create 
customized data extracts in a machine-readable format. The Department 
is also seeking to increase the quantity and types of data sets offered 
through DAAS, providing more standardized data documentation in 
electronic formats--including machine-readable--and designing a central 
portal for customers to find data, metadata, tools for ingesting data, 
and data-specific documentation.

II. Review Focus

    The Department seeks public comment on specific approaches that 
could lead to wider and easier access, greater utility, and increased 
comprehensibility to data and associated documentation that the 
Department makes available. The Department also seeks comment on 
challenges with using existing Department data,\4\ including access 
mechanisms, so that the Data Board and various Departmental programs 
can work to make improvements. Respondents should note that this 
request for comments does not address data products designed, 
collected, and published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
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    \4\ Examples of DOL data as they are currently offered include 
enforcement databases (https://enforcedata.dol.gov/homePage.php), 
Wage and Hour Division's enforcement data (https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/data/charts), the Office of Foreign Labor 
Certification's performance data (https://www.dol.gov/agencies/eta/foreign-labor/performance), and assorted data from the Unemployment 
Insurance program (https://oui.doleta.gov/unemploy/DataDashboard.asp).
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    The Department seeks comments on the specific characteristics of 
data and supporting materials that would allow the public to better use 
and benefit from our open data. Examples may include:
    1. Data content and format;

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    2. Data documentation, including metadata content, codebooks, and 
data dictionaries;
    3. Data formats specific to certain analysis patterns (e.g., 
spatial analysis, machine learning, and program evaluation) including 
tagging, geocoding, and data encoding that reduce burdens and increase 
efficiency;
    4. Data quality issues that diminish the benefit and utility of 
Departmental data and limit transparency and analyses; and
    5. Challenges with data comparability including linking across 
program data, establishing common identifiers across data sets, and 
merging Departmental data with other Federal and non-Federal data 
sources.
    The Department also solicits public comment on the following areas:
    6. Identifying data sets that are currently useful and merit 
prioritization in forthcoming open data efforts;
    7. Identifying data sets that are neither public nor available 
through restricted-use access programs that could provide value to the 
Department's stakeholders if made available;
    8. The relative advantages and disadvantages of various machine-
readable formats including JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), 
Extensible Markup Language (XML), and ASCII text files with or without 
comma-separated values (CSV) files;
    9. The relative advantages and disadvantages of providing open data 
through DAAS vis-a-vis complexity, efficiency, convenience, automation, 
and user-friendliness;
    10. Specific data sets and methodologies that would be useful in 
achieving the goals of President Biden's Executive Orders on Equity 
from January 2021 and on Customer Experience from November 2021; and 
relevant data and metadata standards that enhance interoperability, 
promote transparency, aid discovery, provide understanding, and 
facilitate integrating data from multiple sources.
    Respondents are encouraged to associate the category numbering 
above within their responses to facilitate organization and analysis of 
the comments.

    Signed at Washington, DC, this 7th day of June, 2022.
Scott Gibbons,
Chief Data Officer, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Policy.
[FR Doc. 2022-12510 Filed 6-14-22; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 4510-HX-P