Division of Data (DOD)

The Division of Data (DOD) was formed in October 2020 as part of an agency reorganization, incorporating data reporting and analysis functions previously housed in the Department of Market Oversight (DMO) and additional analytics functions located throughout the Commission.

DOD’s mission is to enable better decision-making and policy making through better data and analytics throughout the enterprise. The DOD communicates vision for the Commission, by ensuring privacy, security, governance and industry data standards are incorporated into requirements, and ensuring that business needs continue to be met with respect to data.

About the Division

DOD is responsible for the Commission’s enterprise data strategy and data governance approaches. DOD creates data architecture and centers of excellence for analytics, visualization, and storage of data. In addition, DOD supports the Commission’s strategic objectives with respect to data and analytics through collaboration with other Divisions and Offices, including ingest of data from registered entities pursuant to the Commodity Exchange Act and Commission regulations, as well as integration of that data with other data sources.

Division in Action

DOD achieves its mission through 4 types of activities (CITE):

  • Collaborate – the DOD collaborates with market participants, operational divisions of the CFTC, and the industry to ensure data quality, integrity and confidentiality.
  • Integrate – the DOD reduces data silos by joining datasets both within the Commission and from external sources for the clearest possible picture of economic and market conditions.  The DOD creates a holistic picture of potential future conditions to inform data driven policy making.
  • Train – the DOD manages centers of excellence to facilitate a data culture within the commission, participates in technology advisory groups internally and externally to determine best practice and facilitates training on data topics throughout the Commission.
  • Execute – the DOD performs or informs analytics, visualization and operational software development at the Commission.

Senior Staff

Ted Kaouk, Chief Data Officer and Director
John Coughlan, Chief Data Scientist