Federal agencies strive for OPEN Government Data Act compliance – and a Modern Data Experience can deliver

The value of data for federal agencies is seemingly limitless, and agencies are well aware of the role data will play in helping them meet their goals. The federal government is making strides with the OPEN Government Data Act, which demonstrates the critical role data plays in future innovation. 

Under this act, federal agencies are required to develop and maintain a comprehensive data inventory and must appoint a chief data officer (CDO) to take the lead throughout the act’s implementation and establish a data governance body within the agency. 

While the OPEN Government Data Act provides clear deadlines for federal agencies to establish new positions, internal and interagency bodies, some agencies have been slower to comply with new regulations than others. This begs the question ‒ why? While agencies are tasked with many requirements under the act, it is important to consider that one of these is the selection of proper solutions capable of ensuring the integrity, security and availability of their most important resource – data.

According to a Splunk report, CDOs have noted that internal data silos and a lack of data and organization standardization was among their remaining roadblocks for implementation. From agriculture to health to public safety, the federal government has uncounted exabytes of data that can be utilized by agencies as they look to establish or extend government operations that ultimately benefit the citizens they serve. But if it is locked away, it cannot be leveraged for innovation. They also express the need for recommended formats, tools or technologies to use while they work towards full implementation. This is where a Modern Data Experience that is built on a data-centric architecture becomes critical to delivering outcomes that matter and ensuring the success of the OPEN Government Data Act. 

Pure Storage defines a Modern Data Experience as a Storage-as-a-service approach to enable organizations to extract more value from their data while reducing the complexity and expense of managing infrastructure. A Modern Data Experience features three distinct characteristics:

• First, a Modern Data Experience should be simple. It should be API-defined, with easy, common management tools and proactive analytics that are actionable at scale. 
• Second, a Modern Data Experience should be seamless. This experience can span any protocol, any tier of service level and multiple clouds in a single environment. 
• Lastly, a Modern Data Experience should be sustainable. You should be able to buy only what is needed, and the experience should be self-upgrading.

A Modern Data Experience is key for government agencies as they look for data protection, recovery and restoration options. Federal agencies are responsible for large amounts of data – and they are required to keep that data for extensive periods of time. Agencies must decide the best method of restoring this data in the event they fall victim to any type of incident. A modernized approach that focuses on data and places it at the center of everything is the best solution for these agencies as they explore restore options.

Organizations, including government agencies, seek a new type of data hub – one that allows organizations to consolidate all applications on a single storage platform to unify and share data across the applications that need them for better insight. The hub must allow for organizations to share and deliver data for modern analytics and AI, not primarily to store data. The performance and availability benefits offered in production and backup environments provide significant improvements in efficiency and citizen services. This type of platform enables both a modern backup environment and the exploration of secondary uses of the data that may have vast benefits across agencies.

As agencies look to implement the OPEN Government Data Act, it is imperative that they have the right solutions to ensure data security and availability. A Modern Data Experience built on a data-centric architecture guarantees that the data will deliver outcomes that matter – and as the heart of federal government operations, this will benefit the agencies and ultimately, citizens.

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