The amount of information federal leaders must digest is almost too much to conceive. The numbers are unbelievable. The International Data Corporation predicts that the global datasphere—the data we create, capture, and replicate—will balloon from approximately 50 zettabytes in 2020 to 175 zettabytes in 2025.

In both the federal and commercial worlds, data scientists are being lauded as the only people who can get a grasp on this data. This is a noble, but flawed, concept. Relying on only data scientists can add a block to the workflow. Alan Jacobson, chief data and analytics officer at Alteryx, recently joined Federal News Network to discuss how to provide more data access to more people.

“With our servers, we allow colleagues to be able to collaborate on their analytics, to be able to share them,” he said. “Certainly, being able to take fragmented data and blend it together is key in an analytic process.”

Jacobson also argued against using yesterday’s tools for today’s data sets.

“At the end of the day, being able to handle a billion rows and being able to process it is probably not something you’re going to be able to do with a typical spreadsheet sitting on the desktop of most federal employees,” he said.

Jacobson also suggested that the Alteryx platform was designed for data challenges of the 2020s. It is not a point solution; it is a platform that will allow agencies to take the risk out of the system. It will put data back into the hands of people who can make meaningful decisions.

“Taking a great software platform that is capable across all those different domains and combining it with the domain expertise of today’s knowledge worker is really where again, the magic happens,” he said.

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