Agencies struggle with data for many reasons. It grows amazingly fast and draws from novel sources, including Internet of Things devices. Finding qualified employees to handle it, especially in the public sector, can be difficult. And there are compliance and cybersecurity concerns, and technology integration challenges.
Mismanaged data can lead to poor decision-making, increased risk and even legal fallout, but the No. 1 consequence is loss of trust, said Richard Barlow, Principal Technologist for State Local Government and Education (East) with Pure Storage, which provides agencies with fast, secure, energy-efficient data storage. The public remembers your mistakes.
“You can have a beautiful white shirt, flawless. But if there’s one tiny stain on the collar, everybody will see that one stain,” he said. “They won’t see the rest of the shirt at all…. All they remember is the one thing you or the agency did wrong. It’s never the 50 years of flawless service.”
Recipe for AI Analytics
AI helps agencies make better, safer use of data, but there’s a recipe for using AI-driven analytics effectively, Barlow said. Agencies need enormous amounts of data, potentially millions of data points. They need the right data, which could be years-old information that once seemed irrelevant.
“It used to be [that] you go through your data, you find the important pieces and you throw everything else away,” Barlow remembered. “With AI, you can never do that.”
And agencies must use appropriate AI models. “As you grow more and more data, you have to decide when [it’s] time to start following the model, when you trust it,” he said. AI models sometimes produce counterintuitive results, but that’s OK, he said, as long as enough of the right data was factored in.
Exciting Possibilities
AI tools can seem almost magical, but Barlow said natural language processing is one of the most exciting in the public sphere. “You can tell a system what you want in normal English … and instead of having a data scientist sit down and create a complex model, the system, using your verbiage, creates it for you,” he explained.
ML models detect fraud by comparing data — for instance, your tax return against tax filings that millions of similar individuals submitted. And geospatial analytics, Barlow said, will improve disaster response planning, weather forecasting and municipal development, among other possibilities.
Getting AI-Ready
However, agencies need three things before launching AI initiatives, according to Barlow: a flexible mindset, an overarching AI strategy and a data management plan. Pure Storage provides software and hardware to help agencies maximize data’s potential, and it reduces the complexity and cost of managing IT infrastructure, he said.
The FBI, CIA, Department of the Navy and other agencies with immense data needs rely on Pure Storage. Barlow noted the company’s impressive customer experience ranking: an industry-leading 82.4 Net Promoter Score. “If you have a problem, we’re there with you and we’ll help you fix it,” he said.
This article appeared in our guide, “Gearing Up for AI.” To learn more about AI’s transformative impact in government and prospects for 2024, download the guide here:
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