SAS: Enabling federal agencies to analyze data

Federal Tech Talk

SAS: Enabling federal agencies to analyze data

Dr. Steve Bennett, director of the Global Government Practice at SAS, joins host John Gilroy on this week's Federal Tech Talk to discuss data analytics and how ...

January 12, 2019 4:56 pm

1 min read

(This show originally aired on November 6, 2018)

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Federal agencies have no lack of data sets. With the advent of IoT and virtually free storage, the challenge is not in collection, but making sense of it. SAS started off analyzing complex agricultural data; today they are adding agricultural data from drones.

Head shot of Steve Bennett — Steve Bennett, director, Global Government Practice, SAS

Dr. Steve Bennett, director of the Global Government Practice at SAS, joined host John Gilroy on this week’s Federal Tech Talk, and shared his insights from his years in academia, inside the federal government, and with SAS.

During the interview, Bennett recounted his journey. He mentioned his Ph.D. from Stanford and working for the National Biosurveillance Integration Center for the Department of Homeland Security, followed by SAS. This background enabled him to have a deep understanding of the rapidly changing requirements for federal agencies. In a recent presentation, Bennett estimated that we will have a staggering 163 zettabytes of data to content with. He maintains the new frontier is not space, but data.

Bennett also underscored the idea that we are not gathering data and analyzing it for the sake of busy work. The goal here is to empower innovation through analytics. He also mentioned success at applying data to solving the opioid crisis.