Introducing the Data Analytics Team: An Interview with Katie Webster, Ph.D., Director of Data Analytics.
The Data Analytics Team is RS21’s newest functional team. Director Katie Webster, Ph.D. is managing the full team of analysts and overseeing analytics across accounts. The primary focus of our analysts is to provide embedded analytic support to RS21’s clients.
For years, our analysts have been exclusively working in the federal government space, especially in DHS, including CISA, FEMA, and TSA. Now, the team has expanded to work across RS21’s portfolio. The team’s goal is to help clients understand their data needs and gaps, then draw key insights from data. As the team continues to grow, it will support more clients in data analytics, which is particularly exciting.
Our team is looking to expand our role in providing in-depth support to our customers after the product handoff. We will maintain an embedded presence with customers after delivering the tools to help them get even more insights and value out of the products that RS21 is building.
Hello, Katie. Can you describe the role of the Data Analytics Team and how it builds upon RS21’s services and capabilities?
RS21 has been dedicated to providing analytic support to our clients for years, but now with a dedicated Data Analytics Team, our role has evolved to include a couple of key pillars. The first is to provide embedded analytic support to a variety of customers; this includes both inside and out of the Federal Government space. Maintaining these projects and providing continued support has been the team’s most significant work.
We are also looking forward to forming partnerships with some of the other functional groups at RS21 to help bring even more value to our customers. RS21 does an excellent job of providing tools and products to our clients, and one of the ways the analysts help is by explaining how some of those tools might be used in real-world application.
Our team is also looking to expand our role in providing in-depth support to our customers after the product handoff. We will maintain an embedded presence with customers after delivering the tools to help them get even more insights and value out of the products that RS21 is building.
By keeping analysts embedded with our customers, we will be present and ready to help with ad hoc or crisis-driven analytic needs. Whether it’s something from a current event, crisis, cyber-attack, or an international conflict, situations pop up that require our analysts to be present and ready to help on the day-to-day.
What do you believe is the most important thing for clients to focus on when it comes to data analytics?
Sometimes folks either get intimidated or think they need fully complete, thorough data sets. However, that’s not usually the case. One of the things that we really like to do is meet clients where they’re at. We’re able to help clients with a variety of analytic needs even with foundational, fundamental things like descriptive statistics.
A lot of times bringing in the data early is more useful rather than waiting to have a “perfect data set” because that rarely exists anyway. We’re certainly happy and able to help folks at any stage in their data maturity process.
What do you think makes the Data Analytics Team a good partner to RS21’s clients?
Our team has both technical and social science skills. We’ve got folks with advanced backgrounds in applied statistics, geospatial analysis, and programming that complement skills we see on some of the other teams at RS21. The fact that we can bring these skill sets that flesh out some of our other capabilities, is a big value add.
The other important factor that sets us apart is most of our team coming from a social science and analytics background. That’s one factor that helps us better understand and empathize with the issues our clients are wrestling with and how to address their needs. We’re very comfortable navigating ambiguity, and we can quickly make decisions to correctly handle uncertainty in various situations.
Often our analysts facilitate conversations to help translate key insights. This becomes particularly important with some of the high impact projects because as we do the most rigorous and sophisticated work possible, synthesizing it effectively is also a key step so it’s easy to point policy makers to important insights and what they really need to pay attention to.
We will give clients this very detailed methodology, and we’ll do a very rigorous analysis. But at the end of the day, we also focus on identifying the top places that clients need to consider.
What are the biggest challenges in data analytics right now? And what is the Data Analytics Team doing to solve these challenges?
Great question. There have been some challenges on the forefront of my mind, and several of our other teams at RS21 certainly deal with some of these same issues. It can be challenging to make sense of the available data and cut through the noise to find important and valuable insights. One aspect that we are always wrestling with is, of course, data quality, uncertainty, and ambiguity. Often the spaces that we operate in at RS21 are less black-and-white and more focused on people, like government and healthcare.
A lot of times, analysts are dealing with data that’s missing, incomplete or messy, and they must be both comfortable and experienced enough to handle those uncertainties. A key role for the analysts is to help our clients figure out what exactly they can understand from the data and the biggest takeaways.
What have been some of the greatest accomplishments for the Data Analytics Team?
There are a few efforts that the team is proud of, particularly our role as part of the CISA COVID Task Force.
We worked quickly during the COVID-19 pandemic to help CISA and other federal partners understand the impact on the nation: examining everything from hospitals and critical manufacturing to supply chains and workforce shortages. The scope was very broad so, as a result, we got to do very impactful work.
We developed predictive modeling to help understand how surges at hospitals would strain capacity, and how that could lead to worse outcomes with greater fatalities down the road. That model was published in CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Several of our team members who worked on that project are named authors on that publication.
Another COVID-19 related project that we were involved with was helping FEMA understand where pop-up clinics for mobile vaccination sites were most needed. We developed a proprietary algorithm to predict vaccine hesitancy, and we used that to help FEMA understand which locations have high numbers of essential workers and people hesitant to get a COVID-19 vaccine. This is a great project because it helps show some of our technical skills, but also had a meaningful impact.
A couple of other projects that we are proud of is our support and reports for CISA’s Cyber Security Division, which have made it up high in the White House. We also did some work on a task force for the Russia-Ukraine crisis which made it to Vice President Kamala Harris’s desk, which was an exciting moment for the entire team.
What are your goals for the future of the Data Analytics Team?
The biggest goal right now for our group is really starting to integrate into projects across RS21’s portfolio. A lot of our examples have drawn from our Federal Government work, because it’s important and where the team got its start, but the type of work and value that the team adds is not unique to the government space. The team is excited to start getting more involved in projects across our portfolio at RS21.
The work we are doing is both exciting and challenging, but also has such a real-world policy impact which is extremely rewarding. The Data Analytics Team is very grateful for all the support at RS21 internally and from our clients. This has been something that RS21 has been working towards for a while now, and it is exciting for our team to begin partnering with more clients to bring embedded analytics services to government, healthcare, local and state organizations, and others.
About Katie Webster
Katie Webster, Ph.D., is the Director of Data Analytics with a background in political science and applied statistics. She has led analytics for federal government projects and now oversees the Data Analytics Team, which serves RS21’s entire portfolio. She previously worked in academia and was an intelligence analyst at the Department of Defense. Katie lives in the research triangle in North Carolina with her husband, two kids, and lab-pitbull rescue.
About RS21
RS21 is a rapidly growing data science company that uses artificial intelligence, design, data engineering, analytics, and modern software development methods to empower organizations to make data-driven decisions that positively impact the world. Our innovative solutions are insightful, intuitive, inspiring, and intellectually honest. With teams in Albuquerque, NM, Washington, DC, and distributed throughout the country, RS21 is a three-time Inc. 5000 fastest-growing company and a Fast Company Best Workplace for Innovators.
