New Report: "Knowledge Representation and Information Management for Financial Risk Management"

Sen. Jack Reed Highlights the Smith School and Pew Financial Reform Project at Reception

The University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business and the Pew Charitable Trusts sponsored a public reception Nov. 29, 2010, marking the establishment of the Office of Financial Research (OFR) and the release of the National Science Foundation Workshop Report, Knowledge Representation and Information Management for Financial Risk Management.

The National Science Foundation (NSF), the Smith School and the Pew Financial Reform Project cosponsored a July workshop that brought together academicians, financial regulators and industry practitioners, just as President Obama signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act into law on July 21, 2010. The act created an Office of Financial Research (OFR) and a Data Center (OFR/DC) with the mandate to establish a sound data management infrastructure for systemic-risk monitoring. Out of that summer workshop, the participants came up with a set of recommendations for industry and regulators for the tremendous amount of data that needs to be managed in today's financial systems.

Charles Taylor, the Director of the Pew Financial Reform Project, welcomed guests from Capitol Hill, and government agencies, as well as practitioners and academics from the computer sciences, information sciences and finance fields.

Straight from a roll-call vote on the U.S. Senate floor, Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) applauded the report's recommendations to fully implement the Office of Financial Research as well as its legally mandated data center. We need this type of analysis, said Reed. We have the opportunity not just to create an institution, but to create a culture. He emphasized the need for this agency to be analytical, apolitical, and a collaborative effort between the government, finance and computer and information sciences communities. Sen. Reed's vision is for the Office of Financial Research to serve as a significant counterweight to the asymmetric information that currently plagues the financial system.

Suzi Iacono, division director (acting) of Computer and Information Sciences and Engineering at the National Science Foundation (NSF), said that this report is one example of NSF's big, bold ideas that have made a huge impact on science and information. We love to bring researchers together to foster intense, interdisciplinary conversations and create potentially transformative research, Iacono said. She also talked about the challenge of education and the need for bringing this disciplined analytical approach to identifying financial systemic risk into the classrooms.

Dean G. Anand Anandalingam of the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business commended the multi-disciplinary effort of the workshop. He praised the creation of the Office of Financial Research as a positive first step in managing the vast, rich array of information and data that will serve as a key component of financial reform.

The Smith School's Center for Financial Policy and the following faculty members were instrumental in the development of the report: Louiqa Raschid, Professor of Information Systems, Albert "Pete" Kyle, Charles E. Smith Chair Professor of Finance, and Mark D. Flood, research affiliate with the University of Maryland.

Eric Miller, MBA Candidate, Center for Financial Policy