Understanding and managing risk ⏤ and eventually minimizing it ⏤ is a key consideration for any enterprise. Knowing whom to trust to help execute the mission can be an enormous undertaking across government.
Thomas O’Neill, chief analytics officer at Thomson Reuters Special Services, is part of the team that helps the government better understand whom it’s working with, to carry out its critical missions.
“Who are they using to support their mission? What do they actually know about their supply networks, their vendors, their connections to outside organizations, and how those associations could present risk to their ability to proceed with their mission?” O’Neill said.
With a vast trove of proprietary data and specialized analytic capabilities, TRSS is uniquely qualified to support those kinds of investigations, O’Neill said.
“It’s not just the data itself, but what we do with the data,” he said. “We pair smart people with compelling data and then build tools to better understand it, to curate it. The data itself can tell the first chapter of the story, but we are building capabilities that allow us to tell you the next five things you maybe didn’t even know existed in the story.”
To grow the federal footprint for TRSS, O’Neill is looking to build upon those technical capabilities, with the aim of further empowering the in-house experts. In support of their efforts, “we are taking what is already a good platform, and we are taking that to the next level, so that we can do it faster and smarter,” he said.
O’Neill’s growth strategy leans heavily into culture change. As these new and more powerful tools emerge, he’s working to ensure people can use them to maximum effect.
To put technology to work, people need to understand how it will help them to support the customers’ missions even more effectively. O’Neill makes the case with a football analogy: In the past, “the data would allow our analyst to start their drive at the 20-yard line with 80 yards left to go to the end zone,” he said. “With technology, we’re giving our analysts the ability to start at the 50-yard line.”
How so?
“All that time they would spend doing the initial collection of the data, the processing, synthesizing and curation required to form a compelling assessment ⏤ with technology, we can remove some of that effort,” he said. “That means they can spend more of their time on the more complex questions, the challenging things that lead to increased discovery.”
Analysts get to do more interesting work, and customers, in turn, get higher-level outcomes.
Success here depends on developing and empowering his team to embrace a growth mindset. O’Neill has a plan for that, too.
“I’m responsible for transforming our approach ⏤ giving traditional intelligence analysts the skills to be a little bit closer to a data scientist,” he said. That means “my analysts have to be able to speak that language and be able to work with our data engineers, our data scientists, to create those more compelling solutions.”
In this process, “I’m trying to change hearts and minds to a certain degree,” he said. “I’ve got folks that have been comfortable doing things a certain way and it’s been very successful. I can’t just change all the performance standards to say: Hey, you need to be more technical.”
Not all team members have the necessary skill set or mindset yet, so TRSS has implemented training programs designed to elevate individuals to the next level. Analysts are collaborating closely with technologists to achieve shared goals. It’s not just about the company developing tools and expecting people to adapt; practitioners are also being encouraged to contribute to the tool-building process, O’Neill said.
Overall, “I’m trying to get them excited about telling a technology-enabled, data-driven story,” he said. “We’re changing how they think about the problem. We are changing the standard, changing our performance goals and making them attainable. This is important for the overall growth of the business. We can’t stay static, or we’ll get left behind.”
After 15 years with TRSS (the majority of his professional career) O’Neill said he’s still excited to be engaged in this effort.
“Obviously, the work itself is interesting,” he said. “It’s dynamic and fulfilling. But the reason that I’ve stuck with this organization so long is that I have been given opportunities to try, fail, learn. I’ve been supported throughout my entire leadership journey, and I just don’t know that you find that everywhere that you go. With our current transformation, my hope is that I give my team that same positive experience.”