The U.S. Department of the Treasury plays a central role in safeguarding the financial integrity of the federal government. Through its Bureau of the Fiscal Service, Treasury manages the government’s accounting, payments, collections, borrowing, and public debt operations — processing trillions of dollars annually while overseeing systems that underpin federal financial transparency. From publishing public spending data to managing the nation’s debt portfolio, the bureau operates at a massive scale and complexity, where even marginal improvements in integrity and governance can translate into significant fiscal impact.

In this third and final installment of a three-part series, Justin Marsico, Assistant Commissioner for Fraud Prevention and Financial Integrity, U.S. Department of the Treasury, Bureau of the Fiscal Service, speaks with Carly Mitchell of Guidehouse, about the evolution of the Chief Data Officer (CDO) role inside Treasury from traditional data stewardship and compliance toward operational leadership, and simplifying governance, and aligning the CIO, CDO, and CFO functions to enable fraud prevention at scale.

In the first part of this series, Marsico outlined how Treasury is modernizing the Do Not Pay program, reducing administrative barriers, and driving broader agency adoption. In the second, he explored how Executive Order 14249 is reshaping payment verification, strengthening visibility across federal financial systems, and centralizing disbursement authority to prevent fraud before funds leave government control.

Edited Excerpts:

Q: How has the Chief Data Officer role evolved from focusing on data stewardship and compliance to becoming a mission-critical operational function? And what organizational or talent changes were necessary to make that shift sustainable?

I started as the CDO about four years ago, and the role has changed quite a bit over that time. One advantage when I began was that the role included the data transparency function. We were already responsible for publishing federal financial data and running an operational component inside a very operational organization.

After the Evidence Act was passed, we worked to understand the full set of CDO requirements. From open data, we found that much of that work was already underway. We manage USASpending.gov, where the public can view federal contracts, grants, and program-level spending. We also manage FiscalData.Treasury.gov, where we publish over 60 datasets on federal government finance, including information on the deficit, the debt, and official exchange rates.

From there, our focus shifted inward—toward governing enterprise data more effectively. In the early years, we did not have an enterprise environment where data could come together, be cataloged, analyzed, and rapidly used for mission-driven use cases. Instead, there were independent hubs across business lines, along with local Excel files and ad hoc Python notebooks. That worked for a time, but as use cases became more complex, we needed an enterprise data environment.

We built that environment — now in production as the Fiscal Data Hub — and we continue partnering with business lines to operationalize use cases. Looking ahead to 2026, a major priority is automated, enterprise-wide data cataloging in a centralized location. That visibility ensures we are using the right data sources for the right use cases and can quickly diagnose and address data quality issues.

Q: If you had a magic wand and could change one thing about enterprise data governance to better support a federated data model, what would it be?

From talking with people across our organization, I’ve heard that they want a simple approach to governance. And that’s really hard to do when you’re working in the C-Suite. When you’re working as a CDO, if you don’t have visibility into data, the only way you can get information about that data is by asking a lot of questions.

And the way we ask questions is by producing data calls, sending around information, and essentially repeating that process over and over again. When you make that decision repeatedly, it builds up the cost for the business lines of complying and describing their programs, operations, data, and performance metrics.

The right way to do this is to make sure there’s tight coordination between the CIO, the CDO, and the CFO of an organization. So when we’re going to the business lines and asking questions or asking them to go through a governance process, we’re doing it in a coordinated way.

It also helps because when business lines are making requests, producing business cases, and asking for something, it gives you, as a data professional, a little bit of leverage to ask the kinds of questions and discover the types of information about data that might otherwise be harder for a business line to prioritize, especially when they’re focused on daily operations and responding to the many requests in front of them.

Read part 1 here.

Read part 2 here.

CDO Magazine appreciates Justin Marsico for sharing his insights with our global community.