Big Data
Why lineage is the real deliverable on a federal data program
Dashboards age out. Lineage compounds. A short note on the artifact that survives administrations and contractor transitions.
The dashboards a program is celebrated for at launch are usually retired within three years. The data lineage that backs those dashboards, if it was ever produced, often outlives the rest of the program.
We have inherited multiple federal data platforms where the original delivery team is gone, the visualization layer has been rebuilt twice, and the only artifact that explains where a particular metric comes from is the lineage documentation. When that documentation exists, the program continues. When it does not, the program restarts from scratch — usually under a new name.
Treat lineage as the deliverable. The dashboards are the way you demonstrate it.