What Story Is Your Data Telling?
Manually integrating their data costs agencies too much time and too much money. An industry expert explains how automation can help agencies tell a better data story.
Manually integrating their data costs agencies too much time and too much money. An industry expert explains how automation can help agencies tell a better data story.
Automation can make analyzing data so much easier. It can help agencies tell better “data stories” that put the information in context. Automating isn’t easy, though. Here’s advice from an industry expert.
It wasn’t just a lack of automation that once held the agency back. It was the way it thought about and used data.
We all know that the Defense Department (DOD) operates across land, sea, air and space. But there’s another domain for which it’s not always recognized: information.
Data collection and organization are important steps in becoming more data-centric. For data to truly be useful, it should be accessible to everyone.
DoD is committed to managing its data as a critical part of its overall mission. By not treating it as a separate commodity, the department expects to make faster, better-informed decisions.
Before emerging technologies can transform an agency, the data has to be standardized, accessed and shared, directed by organizational guidance.
The amount of data that agencies need to find and parse through at any given time can be daunting. In addition to analyzing mountains of information, analysts need to determine how the insights they glean can improve mission operations.
Today, most government agencies have to deal with new data sources that are coming to them almost daily – social media, open data, sensor data, military intelligence or data from a sister agency. And the biggest challenge? Currently, the constant stream of data the government is receiving doesn’t fit in current geospatial tools.
With the explosion of data in the government, increased collaboration and information sharing are important goals for any agency. Recent legislation, such as the DATA Act and the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Bill, provides extra incentive for agencies to achieve those goals. However, data often resides in disconnected silos, making that collaboration and sharing difficult.