Mission & Alignment

Background
The EDM Association is a neutral, non-profit industry data management and analytics trade association. The Council's mission is to serve as global advocates for elevating data management and analytics through best practices, standards, training, education, and research.
Purpose
To provide a neutral forum for industry and public sector interfacing that promotes best practices in leveraging data for decision-making and operations.
Mission
Foster opportunities for networking, strengthening relationships, and collaboration among public sector organizations, industry partners, and the global data management community.

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Become part of this community to access exclusive resources, discussions, and updates from the EDM Association.

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Please note: Working Groups, Forum meetings, webinars, and other scheduled activities require a separate registration.

Upcoming Forum Event

US Public Sector Forum

Member Discussion on the SEC–CFTC Harmonization Memorandum of Understanding (MOU)
📅 Wednesday, August 19, 2026    |    🕑 2:00–3:00 PM ET
 Register Now

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Featured Initative

US Public Sector Forum

Member Discussion on the SEC–CFTC Harmonization Memorandum of Understanding

đź“… Wednesday, August 19, 2026
2:00–3:00 PM EDT
 Register Now

Overview

Join EDM Association's US Public Sector Forum for an open discussion on the SEC and CFTC Harmonization Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), signed on March 11, 2026, and help shape the Association's written submission to the Commissions.

Article V of the MOU commits both agencies to improving interoperability through compatible data standards, common terminology and analytical tools. This session provides members with the opportunity to review the draft response and contribute practical industry experience.

Discussion Topics

  • Cross-agency data sharing
  • Common terminology
  • Governance frameworks
  • Semantic interoperability
  • FIBO & industry ontologies

How You Can Help

  • Share operational experience
  • Provide industry examples
  • Review the draft statement
  • Add your organisation as a co-signatory

Who Should Attend

  • Regulated financial institutions
  • Technology providers
  • Data architects
  • Governance professionals
  • Standards specialists

Key Dates

Date Activity
August 5 Draft circulated
August 19 Member discussion meeting
August 21 Industry input due
August 26 Final draft shared
August 28 Co-signatures close
August 31 Submission to SEC & CFTC

Contribute Your Organisation's Perspective

Share your organisation's practical experience, implementation examples and regulatory insight. You can also add your organisation as a co-signatory to demonstrate support for trusted data standards and interoperability.

Submit Your Contribution

Resources

SEC-CFTC Harmonization Initiative Press Release About MOU Fact Sheet About MOU CFTC Harmonization Page

Past Forum Events

Past US Public Sector Forum meetings

Trusted data requirements for today’s federal mandates

July 2026

EDM Association’s US Public Sector Forum hosted an open discussion on the data foundations behind today’s major federal mandates, including the FDTA, the June AI Executive Order, and OMB M-25-06’s zero-trust architecture and AI governance requirements. Panelists John Bottega, David Blaszkowsky, Alex Izotic, and Peter Warms explored how agencies are activating these initiatives, whether staff and contractors are equipped to meet them, and what tools accelerate compliance. The conversation also covered DCAM’s role in advancing data management maturity and how the Legal Entity Identifier and FIBO help agencies satisfy these requirements. The session was interactive, with attendees sharing their own experiences building governed, machine-readable data environments.

The future of data transparency: updates from the Data Foundation

April 2025

Ashley Nelle-Davis of the Data Foundation joined the forum to discuss the nonprofit’s work advancing evidence-informed policymaking and improving the availability, reliability, and transparency of federal data. She traced the legislative path from the 2014 Digital Accountability and Transparency Act through the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act and the Financial Data Transparency Act (FDTA), and introduced the Data Foundation’s Safe Track initiative for monitoring federal policy changes. In a fireside chat with EDM Association President John Bottega, Nelle-Davis discussed how the FDTA is reshaping regulatory compliance and the role of data standards in strengthening transparency. Alex Izotic opened the meeting with an update on EDM Association’s mission and public sector membership, which includes agencies such as USDA, GAO, NASA, and the Department of Commerce.

Combating and measuring fraud: GAO’s use of ontology

February 2025

GAO’s Leia Dickerson and Nick Weeks presented the Government Accountability Office’s Fraud Ontology, developed with EDM Association’s Data Innovation Lab as part of GAO’s Antifraud Resource. The ontology establishes a shared vocabulary for describing fraud across federal agencies, addressing a lack of consistent terminology GAO identified in its oversight work. The session walked through how classes, subclasses, individuals, and properties are structured within the ontology, and demonstrated practical use through the Protege tool and SPARQL querying, followed by an open Q&A and forum discussion.

Arizona: using data to transform state government

January 2025

State of Arizona CDAO Josh Wagner, Arizona DHS Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer Susan Robinson, and Arizona DEQ CDAO Brandon McIver joined the forum’s inaugural Knowledge Series session to describe how their agencies use data to drive transformational change. The panel discussed Arizona’s approach to data governance, performance measurement, and cross-agency collaboration, sparking a lively exchange of questions and experiences from attendees. The session also marked the formal launch of the US Public Sector Forum (established October 17, 2024) and previewed February’s meeting on GAO’s fraud ontology.

Featured Resource

EDMA's FDTA One-Page Resource

New • July 2026 • PDF

Meeting the Financial Data Transparency Act

How the EDM Association helps agencies achieve mission success

The final FDTA joint rule was published June 25, 2026 and takes effect October 1, 2026. It adopts the Legal Entity Identifier and other open identifiers, and sets a principles-based standard requiring searchable, machine-readable data with metadata in taxonomy or ontology models that define semantic meaning. This one-pager maps what the rule asks for to the resources our members already use.

Governing the data, giving it meaning, standardizing the report, and identifying entities and instruments are four different problems.
No single standard solves them. The EDM Association convenes the standards that do.

What's Included

DCAM v3 and CDMC • Data & Analytics

A governed, trusted data foundation, and 14 key controls for sensitive data in cloud and AI, now extended with AI controls for ethics, performance, and risk.

FIBO and the Commons Ontology Library • OMG Standards

Shared, machine-readable meaning for financial entities and instruments, on a reusable cross-domain foundation that extends consistent meaning beyond finance to any agency domain.

SBRM • OMG Standards

A logical model of a report, so a filing in any syntax such as XBRL, JSON, or RDF can be machine-validated and its fields linked to FIBO.

LEI • Open Identifiers

Common, open, non-proprietary identification of entities, maintained by GLEIF and mapped in FIBO.

FinTwins • Digital Twin

Modeling and simulation of financial processes, risk, and settlement, readying public sector data for a simulation-ready, AI-forward environment.

đź“„ Download the One-Pager

For discussion, not legal advice.

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