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Layne Morrison

Layne Morrison

Data Scientist and Lead, Analytics and Evaluation Team at Department of Education

Layne Morrison (she/her) leads a data science team, Analytics and Evaluation, within the Office of the Chief Data Officer (OCDO) at the Department of Education. Her team facilitates data skills acquisition and delivers innovative analytics, including solutions in visualization, text analytics, and web scraping. She also leads the agency-wide ED Data Literacy program, encouraging ED offices to “speak data” together. Layne previously worked in IBM’s Advanced Analytics practice for 15 years, delivering projects in strategy, predictive analytics, simulation, process re-engineering, and text analytics to federal clients. She received her Masters of Science in Public Policy & Management (MSPPM) from Carnegie Mellon University, where her graduate research was on best practices in simulation & spreadsheet analysis. She credits INFORMS mentorship and conferences as key to her early career opportunities and is a proud Certified Analytics Professional (CAP).

Executive

Track: Analytics in the Public Sector

Delivering Data Science in the Federal Context

As federal agencies enhance the strategic use of data, leaders seek to understand drivers of success in building a data culture and advancing data science and OR/MS solutions. Agencies must establish competent, flexible federal data science teams through managing talent, technology and team practices while empowering the users of new data and analytics to maintain solutions sustainably. We share a model for delivering data science within the federal civilian context with examples of success and lessons learned at ED Office of Chief Data Officer.