DoD Employees Cite Major Challenges to Data-Driven Insights
A survey of Department of Defense employees commissioned by DLT partner, Veritas, and conducted by Federal Computer Week found that 46% of respondents agree that data drives all or most of their decisions (58%), yet only 13% would rate their data management capabilities as “Excellent” while 60% rate them as “Satisfactory” or “Poor”.
Challenges Across Each Stage of Data Life Cycle
Specific challenges include the ability to transfer data across systems (is “terrible” wrote one respondent), backing up email and electronic files in line with regulatory requirements, and a lack of governance and control over data. Respondents also said that managing on-premise servers is hard enough, but that “managing a cloud infrastructure is a magnitude more complex.”
When asked what can be done to improve the status quo, a whopping 58% said that data integration could be improved; followed by better data analytics tools (45.8%), data governance (45%), data quality (42%), and improved data access through the cloud (33%).
A specific concern expressed is that “all policy seems to block any form of data sharing making efficiency and data sharing amongst employees nearly impossible. It takes so much extra work to share PDFs with the people sitting literally right next to me that it is nearly impossible to do my job,” wrote one respondent.
Another had this to say: “By the time we get integrated data, the time for decision has passed therefore we are a bunch of gun-slingers shooting from the hip using our experience or gut feelings.”
Data Security a Chief Concern
Security tops the list of concerns when it comes to data management – more than 55% cite it as their number one priority. Other concerns include budget and resource optimization (45%), making data accessible (41%), improving the efficiency in executing data management functions (35%), and reducing duplicate data (34%).
While the cloud will play a big role in supporting these efforts, only 52% have moved their apps (mainly email/collaboration platforms and public websites) to the cloud.
Check out the full report from Federal Computer Week here. Then explore how Veritas helps provide federal agencies with protection, availability, and insight everywhere their information travels.