DJ Patil, U.S. Chief Data Scientist, held a Twitter chat Wednesday discussing the White House's efforts regarding big data.
Mr. Patil is the government's first chief data scientist. Before joining the White House in February, Mr. Patil worked in the private sector at companies including RelateIQ (which has since been acquired by Salesforce.com), Greylock and LinkedIn.
In his Twitter chat, Mr. Patil expressed optimism about the White House's big data efforts and outlined key focus areas ripe for growth.
Mr. Patil kicked things off by outlining 16 key lessons he has learned since taking the job. Here are some of the highlights.
Let's starting w/ some things I've learned since being on the job for 6 months. #WHdata
— DJ Patil (@DJ44) August 19, 2015
1/ There is an incredible opportunity to use data to make life better for every American. #WHData
— DJ Patil (@DJ44) August 19, 2015
6/ What’s causing the shift? It’s great data people here in the gov #WHData
— DJ Patil (@DJ44) August 19, 2015
13/ PDFs aren’t open data… #WHData
— DJ Patil (@DJ44) August 19, 2015
14/ Imagine the impact if every data sci class used data from http://t.co/8Pk9uuJS0n? #WHData
— DJ Patil (@DJ44) August 19, 2015
Mr. Patil then started answering questions from Twitter users. One user asked Mr. Patil to summarize big data goals the White House has achieved in the past six months.
-Vision, goals, team 4 data sciin gov established -Public engaged on responsible use -PMI launched -Police Data https://t.co/1cDFK30yXN
— DJ Patil (@DJ44) August 19, 2015
Responding to a question about whether the government will accept private data sets as donation, Mr. Patil said they encourage people to use public data sets to build off each other.
Great question! We want people to build on top of the data w/ other data sets and make it public! https://t.co/IXvfmRmkU1
— DJ Patil (@DJ44) August 19, 2015
2/ we still need to figure out good models of where to host data. We've got good starts w/ @NOAA & @NIH, @usnistgov https://t.co/IXvfmRmkU1
— DJ Patil (@DJ44) August 19, 2015
And, Mr. Patil jokingly said the difference between working in the public and private sector boiled down to dress code, among other things.
The tie. #WHData https://t.co/sOYhwyMQ14
— DJ Patil (@DJ44) August 19, 2015
2/ There's something powerful waking up in the morning knowing you're part of something bigger. #WHData https://t.co/sOYhwyMQ14
— DJ Patil (@DJ44) August 19, 2015
When asked about safeguarding patient data, Mr. Patil said the patient sits at the center of any strategy and shared a link to the privacy and trust principles associated with the White House's Precision Medicine Initiative.
Great question! 1. Patient must be at the center of any program and have a say 2.Privacy - https://t.co/5ONhy03cMU https://t.co/0yWdEY2Fft
— DJ Patil (@DJ44) August 19, 2015
Mr. Patil ended the Twitter chat with a request.
If I had 1 request. It would be for the public to give more input and feedback on all these projects. The best ideas from from you. #WHData
— DJ Patil (@DJ44) August 19, 2015