3 Tools for Improving Data Warehousing

Robust data management has not always been a top priority for the federal government, but that’s gradually changing thanks to the June release of the Federal Data Strategy. The strategy, which includes guidance for federal agencies’ data governance along the principles of mission, service and stewardship, spurred agencies to treat data as a strategic asset and improve how they manage and access data. The reprioritization of data governance helps agencies become better stewards of data and improve decision-making capabilities.

But adjusting to new-and-improved data management can be a tedious process without the right tools to streamline the process. Fortunately, there are solutions that can assist agencies in meeting new federal goals and developing a well-suited data warehouse. Tools such as Collibra, Confluent and StreamSets work in conjunction with agency-specific objectives to meet the Federal Data Strategy’s goals.

For data to meet its full value, agency leaders must agree on how it should be used, shared and protected. Although widespread strategy goals help leaders determine these agreements, data silos can disrupt the flow of an agency’s work.

Collibra automates data governance and management to quickly and securely transmit information to the users that need it. Other data governance platforms offer similar solutions, but Collibra puts users and processes first. Its cross-organizational structure frees the data so that all users have access to it.

Even if the data is freely available, oftentimes the various systems that rely on the data don’t have the ability to communicate with each other. Confluent, developed by the original creators of Apache Kafka, is an open source event streaming platform that solves this discrepancy. It connects all of an agency’s applications and data sets to process and respond to events in real-time.

As the industry’s only hybrid cloud streaming service, Confluent makes it easier to monitor and manage the health of an agency’s data streams while enforcing valuable security features, such as encryption, authentication and authorization.

Effective data governance and security are necessary precursors to implementing the Federal Data Strategy. Once these foundations are in place, agencies need to build streamlined data warehouses to store and send information aptly.

Data warehousing often relies on processes such as extract, transform, load (ETL) procedures that conform data from one source to another into a ready-to-use format. StreamSets created a DevOps-based approach to ETL. By prioritizing automation and monitoring, the tool is able to help agencies build and maintain data pipelines with ease.

StreamSets provides a collaborative data stream that offers high visibility for agencies to map and monitor dataflows. The company’s unique “DataOps” approach keeps data moving freely, even in the face of change. DataOps applies software engineering concepts, such as agile, lean and continuous integration, to data analytics via methods like workflow automation and collaboration tools.

New Federal Data Strategy goals should overhaul data sharing, design and management to make for easier collaboration and accountability. These objectives could change the face of government data warehousing, but the lofty ambitions can only be met if agencies find the platforms and tools best-suited to their needs. 

To learn more, visit alphasixcorp.com.