Many federal professionals know that they need to extract actionable information from the vast data repositories that their agencies maintain. Yet challenges exist in how to get at that data and use it for meaningful analysis and more informed decision-making. 

How can the federal workforce leverage the resources available to support its mission requirements? One way is to take advantage of the rapidly expanding set of technology and applications that are designed to bring the power of analytics to the subject matter experts. Empower your leadership, field experts and those with knowledge of the data to use their own experience and intuition to drive analysis and derive insight. With outcome-focused analytics now delivered via the desktop, in the cloud, and on a mobile device the number of users that can drive their own path to insight is at an all-time high.

Plan to attend the Government Analytics Forum 2015 where experienced members of the data analysis community will gather to share best practices for Driving Mission Objectives with Informed Decisions.

With a focus on security, efficiency, and optimizing available resources, this one day program will feature keynotes, demonstrations, and break-out sessions to help you and your colleagues explore your options for expanding and applying analytics to meet your agency mission and business objectives.

Join the conversation by using #GovAnalytics

Session Descriptions

Improvise, Adapt, & Overcome Federal Healthcare Challenges with Analytics
11:25am - 12:15pm

Federal Healthcare is in the midst of massive and ongoing change. The full impact of new technologies, the genomic revolution, personalized medicine, health reform legislation, & consumer driven healthcare have yet to be felt, however the public consternation of the rising costs of prescription medications, testing, insurance premiums has already arrived, while fraud & improper payments promise to be an on-going and expensive challenge. There is, however, a silver lining. The by-product of this growth is the massive amounts of structured and unstructured data that is being generated and the promise of the knowledge it will and is bringing Federal healthcare missions adept at extracting and operationalizing this insight, while enhancing collaboration & improving outcomes through the utilization powerful suites of analytic capabilities. Please join us for an interactive discussion where subject matter experts and industry leaders will show you how to manage the healthcare data explosion to support your mission needs and business challenges.

Speakers:
Drew Friedrich, Director of Big Data, Cyber Security and Information Management Solutions, IBM 
Col. (Ret.) David Parramore, Director, Strategic Health Initiatives, IBM Federal

Advanced Analytic Approaches to Enhance Network and Information Security 
11:25am - 12:15 pm

The steadily increasing cost and complexity of information systems, compounded by the growing volume, velocity and diversity of information has created gaps and vulnerabilities in network defense systems that are causing security professionals in the federal arena to take a fresh look at system design. Build upon your cyber defense strategy with the next generation of threat detection methodology. Go beyond traditional rules-based cyber security systems with a machine learning cognitive cyber defense solution. These solutions are already detecting advanced persistent threats from external entities that are adaptively circumventing firewalls and existing threat prevention systems.

Speaker:
Ben Chard, Federal Product Manager, IBM Business Analytics

Financial Analytics...Hitting the Bull's Eye
11:25am - 12:15pm

Federal agency leaders and budgeting professionals face continued uncertainty moving into 2016. As budget pressures increase, agencies must fight for every dollar. Justifying budget requests is made easier when budget allocations are tied directly to agency performance metrics. Utilizing a Results-Based Budgeting approach allocates funds to mission specific metrics and allows agencies to more effectively meet their mission demands.

Speaker:
Andy Schatz, Federal Manager, Performance Management, IBM Business Analytics
Jim Surdoval, Associate, Booz Allen Hamilton

Improve Mission Effectiveness and Efficiency with Regulatory Analytics
1:20pm - 2:10pm 

With decreasing budgets and many in the Federal workforce moving toward retirement, agencies are faced with increasing challenges to fulfill their regulatory, inspection, and audit missions. Whether the focus is environmental or workplace protection, financial or industrial oversight, law enforcement or food safety, or claims and application review, agencies rely on complex inspection procedures to ensure compliance. Today these are increasingly complex problems where federal leadership is faced with managing a few critical resources while trying to conform to policies and regulations and be efficient at the same time. This session will focus on how we can now optimize those regulatory, inspection and audit decisions and processes that are recommended and prioritized by advanced analytics. Learn how your agency can meet its requirements for oversight and analysis more effectively while optimizing the productivity of resources.

Speakers:
Ed Weber, Federal Product Manager, IBM Business Analytics
Brand Carter, Client Solutions Specialist, Decision Optimization, IBM Analytics

Behavioral Analytics for Insider Threat Detection and Prevention
1:20pm - 2:10pm 

Agencies are mandated to gather, integrate, analyze, and respond to insider threat information and suspicious system and network activities. While the mission and rationale is clear, the real challenge is how to monitor, understand, and respond in an effective and timely manner. Consequently, many agency professionals increasingly rely on behavioral analytics to identify and mitigate insider threats by leveraging the vast amounts of data they capture, including network traffic data, to evaluate and detect potential insider actions. Join this briefing to learn how to apply a behavioral analytics approach to understand and react quickly to unauthorized users and network access that may compromise sensitive agency information assets.

Speakers:
Michael Falkowski, Advanced Analytics, IBM
Presenter: Fred Walker, National Security Agency

Applying Analytics for Improved Workforce Planning
1:20pm - 2:10pm 
Take advantage of the latest technological developments and integration of advanced analytics, forecasting and an enterprise ready reporting platform with your workforce planning solution. Enhance the HR decision making process by accessing more current information and providing more accurate forecasts and real -time modeling. Manage this process centrally with self-service analytics for the HR professional.

Speaker:
Andy Schatz, Federal Manager, Performance Management, IBM Business Analytics

Improper Payment Detection and Response Optimization
2:25pm - 3:15pm 

The scope and complexity of many government programs in fact may facilitate the actions of those focused on misuse of Federal funds, and may complicate detection of fraud, waste, and abuse. One way to address this problem is to apply advanced analytics to better understand an agency’s success rate and efficiency in its collective efforts to combat malicious and criminal actions. During this session, participants will have the opportunity to see how to “connect the dots” faster and how to anticipate and prevent instances of fraud, waste, and abuse. Learn how to take an informed and practical approach to help investigators gain insights, prioritize investigations, and determine how to best dedicate staff resources to address the cases with the most significant potential for loss and fraud prevention.

Speaker:
Ben Chard, Federal Product Manager, IBM Business Analytics James Parry, Predictive Analytics Solution Architect, IBM
James Parry, Predictive Analytics Solution Architect, IBM 

Maximize Mission Readiness with Predictive Maintenance and Quality Assurance
2:25pm - 3:15pm 

Government entities are under pressure to reduce their operating and sustainment budgets while supporting an increasing wide range of operations. Attend this briefing to hear from (retired) MG Lester Eisner how leaders can meet these demands by using predictive maintenance to improve their mission readiness while reducing their maintenance costs. MG Eisner will discuss his experience working with the Center for Applied Innovation at the University of South Carolina in developing predictive maintenance research work that goes beyond condition-based maintenance to forecast when an asset is likely to fail, based on usage, wear, and surrounding conditions. MG Eisner will discuss his experiences in applying predictive maintenance to support the Army Reserve Aviation program – and how you can use predictive maintenance to: - Predict the failure of an asset to prevent costly unexpected downtime - Monitor, maintain and optimize assets for better availability, utilization and performance -Predict asset failure to optimize product quality and supply chain processes -Improve diagnosis and prognosis capabilities that can assess aircraft availability under differing operational scenarios -Reduce maintenance costs.

Speaker:
Lee Angelelli, CTO IT Architect, IBM Federal IBM Big Data & Analytics Point of View

IBM Big Data & Analytics Point of View
2:25pm - 3:15pm 

This session will focus on IBM’s Point of View on the topics of Big Data and Analytics and their convergence. As part of this session, we will demystify what is and isn’t Big Data, explore how Data Scientists are applying Analytics to data that is at scale, and discuss the industry trends that are shaping where Big Data Analytics is going next.

Speaker:
Matt Moss, Big Data and Analytics, IBM