Divisions
Data and Technology

The Office of Data and Technology (ODT) is led by the Chief Information Officer and delivers services to CFTC through three components:  Systems and Services, Data Management, and Infrastructure and Operations.  Systems and Services focuses on several areas: market and financial oversight and surveillance; enforcement and legal support; document, records, and knowledge management; CFTC-wide enterprise services; and management and administration. Managing data as an enterprise asset and applying a data-centric approach to service delivery, Data Management focuses on data analysis activities that support data acquisition, utilization, management, reuse, transparency reporting, and data operations support.  Infrastructure and Operations organizes delivery of services around network infrastructure and operations, telecommunications, and desktop and customer services.  These three service delivery components are unified by an enterprise-wide approach that is driven by the Commission's strategic goals and objectives and incorporates information security, enterprise architecture, and project management.

FY 2014 Budget Overview by Mission Activity

Breakout of Data and Technology Request by Mission Activity
Dollars in Thousands
  FTE Salaries and Expenses IT Total
Registration and Registration Compliance 0 $0 $2,850 $2,850
Product Reviews 0 0 950 950
Surveillance, including Data Acquisition and Analytics 60 14,310 20,280 34,590
Examinations 0 0 210 210
Enforcement 7 1,670 6,980 8,650
Economic and Legal Analysis 0 0 1,440 1,440
Data Infrastructure and Technology Support 55 13,110 38,290 51,400
Agency Direction, Management and Administrative Support 0 0 2,000 2,000
Total 122 $29,090 $73,000 $102,090

Data and Technology Request by Mission Activity

Pie chart showing the Data and Technology Request by Mission Activity. Values are as follows:

Registration and Registration Compliance: 3%.
Product Reviews: 1%.
Surveillance, including Data Acquisition and Analytics: 34%.
Examinations: less than 1%.
Enforcement: 9%.
Economic and Legal Analysis: 1%.
Data Infrastructure and Technology Support: 50%.
Agency Direction, Management and Administrative Support: 2%.

Top FY 2012 Accomplishments

Commission staff began using SDR facilities to analyze swaps and worked with industry to implement data standards and improve data quality, focusing on standards for legal entity identifiers, unique swap identifiers, and large trader position and open interest reporting, as well as harmonizing data across SDRs and addressing other Dodd-Frank reporting requirements. The Commission also completed a preliminary assessment of order message data that will enable the routine surveillance of pre-trade activity and provide more transparency into high frequency and algorithmic trading. The Commission continued implementing software to load swaps data into a Commission data warehouse for use by CFTC staff for market surveillance, risk monitoring, enforcement, and economic analysis.  In close cooperation with the industry, the Commission developed and released the Unique Swap Identifier (USI) data standard to support Dodd-Frank rules.  The Commission was actively engaged with U.S. and international regulatory organizations and industry in shaping the implementation of the global and Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) system.  The Commission conducted multiple reviews of SDR registration applications, specifically focused on data management practices and standards.

The Commission updated current systems to support expanded financial and risk surveillance activity. New systems were developed to support IRS and CDS stress testing and margin analysis and to provide tools for valuation and portfolio analysis. Existing systems were updated to support increased financial reporting. At the same time, automated services were implemented for retrieving market data and reference data. The increased functionality of CFTC systems allows staff to spend more time focusing their surveillance on high-risk areas. In addition to enhancing automated surveillance alerts and analysis tools and implementing new market profiling advisories, data cubes to support ad-hoc analysis, and a more robust reporting framework, the Commission increased the use of analytic tools by surveillance staff in order to supplement and increase the effectiveness of automated alerts and profiles. The Commission has planned, identified detailed requirements for, and begun designing a system to support the analysis and monitoring of position limits and hedge exemptions, which will aggregate futures positions with enumerated commodity swap positions. The system will support surveillance processes that combine swaps, futures and options for end-of-day position limits surveillance.

The Commission streamlined its tips, complaints, and referrals reporting function for both whistleblowers and other market participants. Reporting is now supported by an online portal accessible on the Commission's website, which provides direct and immediate processing of submissions to the eLaw systems used to support enforcement activities. The Commission continued sustaining eLaw technology and implemented new capabilities, such as Financial Investigatory Software, which reduces the time required to ingest, parse, and conduct a preliminary analysis of bank statements and other financial data. The Commission has also increased the use of analysis tools by investigators to provide more insight into potential enforcement actions. The online portal will also be used for reporting by market participants and will streamline the submission of documents and information related to registration and compliance, product review, and enforcement activities. The Commission also continued to improve its public website, http://www.cftc.gov, to support increased transparency, improving its search engine and publishing Dodd-Frank timeline information.

To help the effective transition of its workforce to the Dodd-Frank regulatory environment, the Commission leveraged cloud-based, software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions to improve the hiring, training and learning management, and staff-time-reporting processes. To increase the use and effectiveness of SaaS in supporting management and administration, the Commission also consolidated administrative and staff data into a central database supported by web services. In addition to allowing the Commission to streamline vendor management, staff and contractor, and ethics compliance processes, this central database has allowed for the consolidation of and increased control over sensitive personally identifiable information.

In addition to scaling up storage, processing, and communication bandwidth to support increased activity related to Dodd-Frank, the Commission migrated internet connections to a Department of Homeland Security (DHS)-sanctioned Managed Trusted Internet Protocol Service (MTIPS) and began implementing continuous monitoring of information security controls in order to enhance cyber security. To better support its increasingly mobile and internationally-focused staff, the Commission piloted new mobile device technology. Based on the results of the mobile device pilot and other assessments, the Commission is prepared to begin a prioritized, targeted refresh of desktop and mobile technology in FY 2013 to increase the effectiveness of staff. The Commission also completed several key milestones of the second phase of a three-phase effort to improve business continuity and is prepared to implement the capability to restore mission critical and mission essential systems from its Alternate Computing Facility (ACF) in accordance with recovery time and recovery point objectives in the first half of FY 2013.

Top FY 2013 President's Budget & Performance Planned Outcomes

The Commission will begin aggregating data from multiple SDRs and correlating it with futures market data. To fully leverage this data, the Commission will continue to foster industry  and regulatory adoption of new and updated standards, as well as machine-readable formats, enhance analytics platforms used by Commission staff, begin implementing high-performance computing technologies, and further automate data maintenance, collection, and manipulation activities. The Commission will begin efforts to receive entity data, order message data and ownership and control reporting data regularly and use it for aggregation, market surveillance, risk monitoring, enforcement, and economic analysis. The Commission will increase the use of automated feeds for market and reference data and the automated integration of other external data sources, including data maintained by the National Futures Association. The Commission will also increase the maturity and comprehensiveness of data governance and management practices in order to efficiently sustain its data warehouse environment as the volume and variety of data necessary for effective market oversight continues to grow rapidly.  The Commission will also conduct reviews on SDR and SEF registration applications, specifically focused on data management practices and standards.

The Commission will enable the rapid prototyping of new surveillance approaches by staff and employ technology to operationalize successful approaches in order to increase the intelligence of automated surveillance models, alerts, and profiles. Data from SDRs, order message data, and ownership control and reporting data will be incorporated into this effort. The Commission will also continue to modify its large trader reporting and financial risk surveillance systems to support new swaps data analysis, internal reporting requirements, and transparency reporting on http://www.cftc.gov. This effort includes increasing the automation and functionality of technology and tools for collateral valuation, analysis by asset class, monitoring of volatility and margin calculation, trend analysis, and stress testing and back testing. Requirements will be identified for the integrated monitoring of market participants, including swaps dealers and participants, as well as commodity pool operators and commodity trading advisors. The Commission will enhance the unified reporting and data discovery environment to facilitate the use of all data maintained in the data warehouse and CFTC systems.

The Commission will enhance its eLaw evidentiary document management software to improve document and content identification and review processes and increase the number of analytical tools available to investigators and litigators. The Commission will also extend enterprise case management to include market surveillance activities. The Commission will continue to update forensics, eDiscovery, deposition management, trial support, and analytics to support a higher volume of investigations and to more effectively measure program results. The online portal for reporting by market participants will be used for DCO financial statement filings and activities related to registration of organizations, rules, and products. The Commission will also continue automating the receipt of forms from traders, reporting firms, and exchanges to improve data quality and decrease industry and CFTC costs.

The Commission will maintain a stable and secure network, communications, and data infrastructure that supports business continuity. This infrastructure supports systems (e.g., for trade surveillance, position monitoring, or large trader reporting), as well as platforms (e.g., for data analytics or collaboration), that empower staff to fulfill the CFTC mission. The Commission will scale and enhance communication, processing, storage, and platform infrastructure to meet mission requirements and will continue to automate business continuity and security controls to reduce operational risk. The Commission will begin a phased implementation of high-performance computing to improve performance and will begin a technology refresh of staff computing resources to improve productivity.

Top FY 2014 President's Budget & Performance Planned Outcomes

Building on FY 2013 planned outcomes, the Commission will further automate and streamline scheduled data collection activities, including data collected from SDRs and DCOs and will expand high-performance computing capabilities to reduce the latency of processing market data for analysis. The Commission will improve and implement improved standards for managing reference and master data and will implement aggregation mechanisms for swaps data. The Commission will also continue implementation of order message data from the exchanges and SEFs and will implement tools to review and analyze the order message data. The Commission will implement improved processes and methods of auditing SDRs, SEFs, reporting firms and exchanges for compliance with the Commission's data standards and practices.

The Commission will adopt new analytic tools to link hedge-exemption data with end-of-day and intra-day trading data. The Commission will implement surveillance tools used by SROs and integrate capabilities of SROs into operational prototypes. The Commission will develop and implement risk metrics and will implement risk surveillance software to analyze and stress test risks. The Commission will process specific product and time-based message data to facilitate analysis and investigations and will expand the number of facilities providing order messages and the frequency of processing as needed for surveillance requirements. The Commission will also improve ad-hoc reporting and public transparency reporting. The Commission will continue to integrate enforcement case management with surveillance and compliance activities and will update and improve forensics, eDiscovery, deposition management, trial support, and analytics tools and processes.

Examinations, rule enforcement reviews, and legal activities will be supported with improvements to collaboration tools and increased integration between the online portal, automated business processes, analytic tools, and enterprise case management. The online portal for market participants will be connected with additional workflow-based and event-based internal CFTC business processes and will host additional document, form, and market data submissions. The online portal for reporting by market participants will also facilitate a dialogue with industry by allowing the CFTC to provide feedback through the portal to market participants, as well as receive comments directly into relevant systems.

The Commission will enhance communication, processing, storage, and platform infrastructure to more effectively meet mission requirements. The Commission will also continue to implement high-performance computing to improve performance and will complete a technology refresh of staff computing resources to improve productivity. The Commission will also continue security control automation and will begin migrating production operations to a secure, private, cloud-based, off-site location to reduce operational risk.