Why GovDQ Exists
I started GovDQ because I am deeply passionate about empowering institutional strategy through data. For too long, organizations have been forced to surrender their core intelligence to fragmented, expensive, rent-seeking SaaS vendors.
My background is rooted in Accounting Information Systems (AIS) and Financial Leadership. When you approach data from a financial and audit perspective, you realize very quickly that if you cannot trace the lineage of your data, you cannot trust it—and if you do not own the infrastructure it lives on, you do not truly own your strategy.
GovDQ is not a consulting firm or a software vendor. It is a movement. It is an open-source community dedicated to sharing the playbooks, blueprints, and code necessary for institutions to reclaim their digital sovereignty.
A Foundation Built on Execution
My perspective wasn't formed in a vacuum; it was built over a decade of hands-on execution. During my tenure at the University of Nebraska at Omaha—transitioning from teaching Accounting Information Systems to serving as the Director of Business Systems Intelligence—I saw firsthand how siloed data paralyzed executive decision-making. I spent years tying complex financial budgets and tuition remission strategies to student outcomes, realizing that brilliant strategy always fails if the underlying data architecture is fractured.
That realization led me to Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), where I was tasked with building an enterprise data governance program completely from scratch. I designed the foundational operating models, architected the policies, and engineered dozens of custom metadata workflows. Most importantly, I launched a comprehensive Data Fluency program to bridge the gap between technical stewards and executive leadership, proving that true governance is a cultural transformation, not just an IT project.
From Theory to Reality: AngryData
Evangelizing data sovereignty is meaningless without proof of execution. As the Chief Institutional Intelligence Officer (CIIO) at Maryville University, I didn't just advocate for this model—my team and I built it to drive Cabinet-level planning and AI readiness.
We engineered an entirely in-house data operating system called AngryData. By utilizing an open-source, graph-native stack, we bypassed traditional enterprise catalogs, effectively breaking vendor lock-in and proving that world-class institutional intelligence can be built securely from the inside out.
Building the Blueprint
The success of platforms like AngryData proves that the era of mandatory cloud lock-in is over. We now have access to incredible open-source tools—FastAPI, React, PostgreSQL, Neo4j, and containerized LLMs—that allow us to build secure, locally hosted digital vaults.
Through GovDQ, my goal is to act as a sovereign evangelist. I want to help other architects, provosts, and executive leaders realize that they can escape the SaaS tax. You can own your architecture, govern what you ingest, and trust what you measure.
The architecture works. The blueprints are here. Let's build.