Taka Ariga on Using AI to Combat Waste, Fraud, and Abuse in Public Programs

Taka Ariga on Using AI to Combat Waste, Fraud, and Abuse in Public Programs

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2571337/fan_mail/new] In the latest episode of Data for the People! [https://datafoundation.org/pages/data-for-the-people], Data Foundation Senior Fellow Taka Ariga [https://datafoundation.org/news/team/629/629-Taka-Ariga] discusses the prospect of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance government efforts to prevent fraud and other types of improper payments in public benefit programs. Ariga was the first Chief Data Scientist at the Government Accountability Office (GAO) where he also directed GAO’s Innovation Lab. He later served as the Chief Data Officer (CDO) and Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. He is now a Senior Fellow with the Data Foundation and the founder of Sol Imagination [https://sol-imagination.ai/], an AI advisory company. Amanda Cash [https://datafoundation.org/news/team/684/684-Amanda-Cash], the Senior Director of the Data Foundation’s Center for Data Policy [https://datafoundation.org/pages/data-policy], joins the episode as a co-host. Learn more about the Data Foundation/Deloitte report discussed on the episode, Navigating Transition and Change: 2025 Survey of Federal Chief Data Officers [https://datafoundation.org/news/reports/825/825-Navigating-Transition-and-Change-2025-Survey-of-Federal-Chief-Data-Officers].  Want to be part of a national community that promotes policies that enable government data to be high-quality, accessible, and usable? Join our Data Coalition: https://datafoundation.org/pages/join-the-data-coalition The Data Foundation is a 501(c)3 nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank. All contributions may be tax deductible. We appreciate all charitable contributions towards fulfilling our mission to make democratic society better for everyone by championing the use of open data and evidence-informed public policy. Donate: https://datafoundation.org/supportus Follow the Data Foundation on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/datafoundation

The Case for Standardizing the Way We Report Climate and Environmental Data

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2571337/fan_mail/new] This episode of Data for the People! explores a problem with climate and environmental data that burdens public agencies and the private sector: Currently, federal and state regulators have a host of different reporting requirements for climate and environmental data, such as data on greenhouse gas emissions. As a result, the data get reported in multiple ways to multiple regulatory entities, which hampers the public's ability to use the data while making it hard to monitor trends and evaluate the effectiveness of policies and programs. Private organizations also pay a price in terms of time and money to report similar information in different ways to comply with a patchwork of state and federal regulations.  A recent paper by XBRL.US [https://xbrl.us/research/digitizing-climate-change/] proposes that the public and private sectors adopt a structured standardized data format to simplify reporting and improve government's ability to measure trends across jurisdictions and data sets.  The episode features three guests:  * Liv Watson, a Senior Fellow with the Data Foundation's Climate Data Collaborative [https://datafoundation.org/pages/Climate-Data-Collaborative] and a co-founder of the Digital Global Single Market Data Alliance [https://datafoundation.org/pages/global-digital-single-market-data-alliance] * Catherine Atkin, a co-chair of the Law x Climate project at Stanford Codex as well as a Senior Fellow with the Data Foundation's Climate Data Collaborative [https://datafoundation.org/pages/Climate-Data-Collaborative] and a co-founder of the Digital Global Single Market Data Alliance [https://datafoundation.org/pages/global-digital-single-market-data-alliance] * Michelle Savage, Vice President of Communications for XBRL.US They discuss XBRL.US’s proposal to adopt structured, standardized, machine-readable reporting via a semantic data model to improve interoperability, support investors and policymakers, enhance AI use through better context, and reduce a growing patchwork of regulations. We're dropping this episode during the week of DC Climate Week (April 20-24, 2026) when we are co-hosting a full-day event on April 21 about climate and environmental data. Learn more about the event's programming and speakers here [https://datafoundation.org/events/view/climate-environmental-data-day]. The Data Foundation's Climate Data Collaborative makes climate and environmental data work better for decision-makers across sectors. Our vision is a federated and interoperable data ecosystem where decision-makers have the data needed to drive markets, mitigation, conservation, finance and compliance—one where public agencies provide foundational data and private actors are motivated to contribute. Learn more about the Climate Data Collaborative at www.ClimateDataCollaborative.org [https://datafoundation.org/pages/Climate-Data-Collaborative].  Want to be part of a national community that promotes policies that enable government data to be high-quality, accessible, and usable? Join our Data Coalition: https://datafoundation.org/pages/join-the-data-coalition The Data Foundation is a 501(c)3 nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank. All contributions may be tax deductible. We appreciate all charitable contributions towards fulfilling our mission to make democratic society better for everyone by championing the use of open data and evidence-informed public policy. Donate: https://datafoundation.org/supportus Follow the Data Foundation on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/datafoundation

Brett Loper on Using Data Tools to Prevent Improper Payments

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2571337/fan_mail/new] On the latest episode of Data for the People!, Brett Loper discusses policy options for using data tools to prevent improper payments in federal benefit programs. The options appear in a new report [https://datafoundation.org/news/reports/834/834-Program-Integrity-Through-Data-Infrastructure-Options-for-Reducing-Improper-Payments] produced by the Data Foundation and our Fiscal Intelligence Initiative, with support from the Peter G. Peterson Foundation.  Loper is currently the Executive Vice President for Policy at the Peter G. Peterson Foundation after serving in a number of senior roles in the White House and Congress, including as Deputy Chief of Staff to then-House Speaker John Boehner.  Read a short blog summary of the episode [https://datafoundation.org/news/data-for-the-people-podcast/836/836-Brett-Loper-on-Preventing-Improper-Federal-Payments-with-Better-Data-Infrastructure]. Learn more about the Data Foundation's 2026 Advocacy and Policy Agenda [https://datafoundation.org/pages/our-2026-advocacy-and-policy-agenda], including a priority on evidence-based efficiency that demonstrates an immediate return on investment from the federal evidence infrastructure.  Want to be part of a national community that promotes policies that enable government data to be high-quality, accessible, and usable? Join our Data Coalition: https://datafoundation.org/pages/join-the-data-coalition The Data Foundation is a 501(c)3 nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank. All contributions may be tax deductible. We appreciate all charitable contributions towards fulfilling our mission to make democratic society better for everyone by championing the use of open data and evidence-informed public policy. Donate: https://datafoundation.org/supportus Follow the Data Foundation on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/datafoundation

Claire McKay Bowen on the Role Federal Statistics Play in our Daily Lives

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2571337/fan_mail/new] On the latest episode of Data for the People!, Claire McKay Bowen discusses the role federal statistics play in our daily lives, strategies for communicating the value of government data, and her vision for the future of data sharing and data privacy.  Bowen is a data privacy expert who is currently a senior fellow at the Urban Institute, an adjunct professor at Stonehill College, and a board member with the Association of Public Data Users (APDU). Last year, she co-authored a series of blogs for APDU about the manifold ways federal statistics inform routine decisions for Americans [https://apdu.org/2025/11/a-day-in-the-life-with-federal-government-data/], how federal data is like the “forgotten egg [https://apdu.org/2025/09/the-forgotten-egg-the-importance-of-public-federal-data-in-the-united-states/]” used to bake a cake, and what educators can do to teach K-12 students [https://apdu.org/2025/10/eggs-dont-grow-on-trees-and-neither-does-data-how-to-teach-k-12-students-where-data-comes-from/] the origins and importance of U.S. federal data.  Bowen also discusses a recent article she wrote for the Journal of Economic Perspectives titled "Government Data of the People, by the People, for the People: Navigating Citizen and Privacy Concerns [https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.38.2.181]."  The Data Foundation is currently reviewing submissions for the People’s Data 100 [https://datafoundation.org/pages/the-people-s-data-100], an initiative to recognize federal datasets providing the greatest value to Americans. The conversation with Bowen is part of our broader effort throughout 2026 to spotlight the strategic data infrastructure that powers daily life in the U.S., from protecting public health to enabling scientific discovery to safeguarding taxpayer-funded benefit programs.   In the spirit of the initiative, learn more about the AirNow system [https://www.airnow.gov/about-airnow/] that supports the Air Quality index provided by BreezoMeter on the iPhone's weather app. AirNow is a partnership of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Park Service, NASA, the Centers for Disease Control, and tribal, state, and local air quality agencies. Want to be part of a national community that promotes policies that enable government data to be high-quality, accessible, and usable? Join our Data Coalition: https://datafoundation.org/pages/join-the-data-coalition The Data Foundation is a 501(c)3 nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank. All contributions may be tax deductible. We appreciate all charitable contributions towards fulfilling our mission to make democratic society better for everyone by championing the use of open data and evidence-informed public policy. Donate: https://datafoundation.org/supportus Follow the Data Foundation on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/datafoundation

NORC's David Dutwin on How Americans Use and Think about Federal Data

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2571337/fan_mail/new] The latest episode of Data for the People! features David Dutwin, executive director and senior vice president of AmeriSpeak [https://www.norc.org/services-solutions/amerispeak/about.html], a panel-based research platform from NORC at the University of Chicago. Dutwin joins the show to discuss Americans’ trust in federal statistics, science, institutions, and one another. Learn more about the American Statistical Association's The Nation's Data at Risk: 2025 Report [https://www.amstat.org/policy-and-advocacy/the-nations-data-at-risk--2025-report], which includes analyses of AmeriSpeak survey panel data on Americans' perceptions and use of federal statistics [https://www.amstat.org/docs/default-source/amstat-documents/the-nations-data-at-risk-2025/Federal-Data-Use-Analysis-Census-NORC.pdf].  Learn more about the People's Data 100 initiative [https://datafoundation.org/pages/the-people-s-data-100] and nominate a federal dataset [https://airtable.com/appsmDEV9VBkx9vyW/pagf4gR0Y7E5n1HPv/form] providing great value to daily life in the United States before the February 28, 2026 deadline.  In the spirit of the People's Data 100 initiative, here are links where listeners can learn more about two national datasets Dutwin references in the interview:  * The General Social Survey (GSS) [https://gss.norc.org/gss50.html], which Dutwin calls "a mirror into the soul of Americans."  This federally funded survey has been tracking American attitudes, values, and social trends since 1972.  * The Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) [https://www.cdc.gov/brfss/about/index.htm], a collaboration between state health departments and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that uses health-related telephone surveys to collect state data about U.S. residents regarding their health-related risk behaviors, chronic health conditions, and use of preventive services. In the interview, Dutwin gives the example of how Americans might see a statistic on TV about the rate of asthma among adults in a given state, which would likely come from the BRFSS.  Want to be part of a national community that promotes policies that enable government data to be high-quality, accessible, and usable? Join our Data Coalition: https://datafoundation.org/pages/join-the-data-coalition The Data Foundation is a 501(c)3 nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank. All contributions may be tax deductible. We appreciate all charitable contributions towards fulfilling our mission to make democratic society better for everyone by championing the use of open data and evidence-informed public policy. Donate: https://datafoundation.org/supportus Follow the Data Foundation on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/datafoundation