Research indicates that 57% of Federal IT leaders believe their existing data infrastructures are being overwhelmed by the increasing volumes of data, encountering significant difficulties with data storage, management, and extracting insights. Over half (52%) think their organization’s current data infrastructure lacks the agility to adapt to evolving technologies, and 62% worry that their infrastructure won’t scale to meet their data needs over the next two years.
To tackle these challenges, a comprehensive blueprint is essential to help Federal agencies harness the power of data, driving digital transformation, improving mission outcomes, and delivering better services to citizens.
Implications of Overwhelmed Data Infrastructures
Overwhelmed data infrastructures can lead to several critical issues, significantly impacting the efficiency and effectiveness of Federal agencies. As data volumes increase, existing infrastructures struggle to maintain performance levels, resulting in slow data retrieval times, delayed processing, and reduced overall system efficiency. These performance bottlenecks hinder the ability to respond promptly to mission-critical needs.
Infrastructures under strain often result in fragmented data storage across multiple systems and platforms, creating data silos. These silos prevent different departments or teams from easily sharing or accessing critical information, impeding collaboration and comprehensive data analysis, and leading to incomplete or inaccurate insights.
Strategies for Enhancing Data Storage
To address the challenges that come with increasing data volumes, agencies should adopt modern, scalable solutions and optimize storage utilization.
- Cloud-Based Object Storage: Utilizing cloud-based object storage offers scalability and flexibility, allowing agencies to store vast amounts of data cost-effectively while ensuring data integrity and protection through integrated security and compliance features.
- Data Lakes: Implementing data lakes enables the storage of structured and unstructured data in a centralized repository, facilitating efficient data management and retrieval, and supporting advanced analytics and machine learning initiatives.
- Data Tiering: Optimizing storage through data tiering, which involves categorizing data based on usage patterns and storing it in appropriate storage tiers, along with employing compression techniques to reduce data size and deduplication to eliminate redundant data, can further optimize storage capacity and reduce costs.
Gather, Integrate, and Analyze
Data management and analytics solutions can alleviate the challenges of overwhelmed data infrastructures by providing a comprehensive platform for data integration and transformation. They can enable Federal agencies to efficiently process large volumes of data from various sources, reducing performance bottlenecks and eliminating data silos. Additionally, advanced analytics and visualization tools empower agencies to derive actionable insights from their data, improving decision-making and operational efficiency.
Investing in agile, scalable, resilient solutions that integrate with AI/ML capabilities is crucial to manage growing data volumes and evolving technology needs. To transition from data-rich to data-driven, agencies should boost data security with robust access controls, encryption, automated threat detection, and comprehensive backup and recovery plans, alongside consistent cybersecurity training. By better managing data needs, agencies can unlock the full potential of data, driving better mission outcomes and superior service delivery.
Learn More:
- eBook: Anything is Possible with the Right Data Foundation
- Research: Federal Data Maturity Report
- On Demand Webinar: Anything is Possible with the Right Data Foundation