Data Intelligence for Everyone: The Future of Decision Making in the Public Sector

Data Intelligence for Everyone The Future of Decision Making in the Public Sector

INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE

Data Intelligence for Everyone: The Future of Analytics in the Public Sector

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INTRODUCTION Take a look at these stunning facts: 90 percent of all data ever created was created in the past two years, according to Science Daily. Ten times more mobile data will be generated by 2020, according to a Cisco report. And this data is created at a rate of 2.5 quintillion bytes per day, says IBM. Clearly, there is an explosion in the amount of data created by all organizations – and the same holds true for government agencies. Governments at all levels are creating, storing, and sharing more data than ever before. This massive amount of data created at a rapid rate poses both opportunities and challenges.

From an opportunity perspective, today’s data landscape represents an unprecedented way for decision makers and their front-line workers to better understand mission-critical information, quickly take action, and build a more responsive government.

From a challenges perspective, all the data in the world, however, cannot help solve problems or make government more efficient if it is not applied correctly. Too often in today’s data analytics landscape, insight is disjointed as a result of activities executed in silos. This makes it hard for legacy business intelligence (BI) tools to identify issues, take corrective action, and ultimately improve government services with the speed and accuracy the public has come to expect.

Proper data analysis is what makes today’s massive amount of information insightful – it is what saves money and allows government to deliver better services. Modern data intelligence tools, which can be used easily by any employee at any level of government, can address this challenge.

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Industry Perspective

To discuss the current government data intelligence landscape and challenges with legacy business intelligence tools, GovLoop and Salesforce, a leading enterprise cloud company dedicated to modernizing and enabling government agencies, partnered to create this Industry Perspective.

In this report, we will: • Speak with Alan Webber, Research Director for IDC Government Insights, about modern-day data analytics and how it currently operates in government • Discuss market drivers for better data analytics in the public sector, and why they are more important than ever • Speak with Peter Doolan, Executive Vice President, Digital Transformation and Innovation at Salesforce, about how government can be more proactive in serving the needs of its citizens via data • Explain why a “data intelligence for everyone” approach to information analysis is the future of the public sector

THE CURRENT LANDSCAPE OF DATA INTELLIGENCE IN GOVERNMENT A variety of market drivers have brought government to the tipping point of needing critically improved data analytics. As always, shrinking budgets, reduced resources, and a call to do more with less has the government looking to take advantage of data to drive efficiencies.

Additionally, the public sector is driven by trends happening first in the private sector that raise the bar for citizen expectations. It continues to demonstrate how leveraging data to deliver quality at speed is the next competitive differentiator – transforming business models and creating ripple effects that revolutionize entire industries, app by app.

This is the impact Uber, the popular ride sharing app, had on the transportation industry. Uber captured new forms of data – wait time, location accessibility with respect to cabs – and put it to work, meeting the needs of an underserved audience. This was made possible by robust data intelligence tools that could analyze the information in a way that turned insight into timely, targeted services.

Due to these modern day applications of customer service through better data intelligence, expectations citizens have of their governments are rising. They expect the same level of service from government as they receive in the private sector. As it was when Uber entered the market, the current landscape of data intelligence in the public sector space represents an opportunity for agencies to gain a new perspective on an issue, quickly take action, and build a more responsive government – both top down and bottom up.

The combination of today’s data-rich landscape with a growing preference for targeted “just in time” services gives government the opportunity to maximize the power of data analytics and improve citizen services. This is needed: according to a recent Forrester report, 45 percent of government customers think agency representatives understand their needs, compared with 66 percent of private sector customers.

A SNAPSHOT OF DATA ANALYTICS CHALLENGES Based on GovLoop research and interviews with government community

Legacy business intelligence (BI) tools that are clunky, expensive and inefficient that inhibit the average employee from making use of it

A lack of visibility across infrastructure means people to do have an understanding or the full scope of information

Siloed people and tools makes it difficult to share information and best practices quickly

A lack of visibility across connected devices also makes sharing information difficult

A lack of skilled resources means there aren’t enough people whose job is to analyze data

A cultural perception of difficulty in performing analytics discourages the average employee from using data to make decisions

Disparate products that do not integrate well makes it problematic to actually gather data

Data Intelligence for Everyone: The Future of Analytics in the Public Sector

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THE TWO MAIN CHALLENGES OF LEVERAGING DATA INTELLIGENCE In order to better meet these expectations, today’s government needs to follow the private sector in applying data analytics best practices, resetting goals, and reinforcing strength of the mission.

The first step in the process is collecting and gathering necessary information. Fortunately, government already has vast quantities of data.

“Government has an immense amount of data that it doesn’t really derive the value out of,” said Alan Webber, Research Director for IDC Government Insights. “Naturally, there are a lot of constraints on that data. But there’s a huge amount of data there – so government has already cleared the first hurdle.”

So what is holding government back from making use of this data in the same smart and efficient ways that the private sector already does? It falls into two reasons, Webber said: The fact that legacy data analysis tools are cumbersome, restrictive, and difficult to use; and the perception that data intelligence is difficult to pull off unless you are a specialist in it.

It is no surprise that this is the accepted perception of business intelligence tools in government, Webber said. Legacy or unintuitive BI tools have made it hard for the average government employee to identify issues, take corrective action, and ultimately improve services on their own using data. The perception and often reality, when faced with these legacy tools, is only a skilled data analyst could make use of them.

Part of the reason for this misconception is that public sector projects tend to move at a much slower pace than corporate projects. This means that the cutting-edge technology advancements are often not on their radar. Moreover, the acquisition process for technology is cumbersome and agencies are often locked into contracts for years. Thus, agencies are using expensive tools that are essentially out of date by the time they even are able to analyze their data.

In addition to being potentially costly to maintain and unintuitive to use, these legacy tools by nature silo data making it difficult for employees to pull information from disparate systems or have visibility across platforms. For decades, government has relied on these tools for data management, with their relational databases and dedicated expensive storage. But the rapid increase in the amount of data being created today calls for new tools, systems, and approaches in data analytics that can better handle this influx.

The other reason government isn’t fully taking advantage of data analytics, according to Webber, is because “there needs to be a cultural shift and understanding that there are excellent tools out there that can help almost anyone derive value out of their data.

Especially government.”

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Industry Perspective

This cultural shift is essential. Webber explained that government needs to learn that data is more than just inscrutable numbers and spreadsheets, so it will be able to fully understand the impact it can have on the citizens it serves.

Data isn’t a specialized piece of information – it’s everywhere, Webber noted, and should be accessible and analyzed by all.

“Think about this: Every time you fill out a form, that’s data. Every time you send an email, there’s data in there. There’s data about the email, there’s data that you’re transferring, you can do content analysis on it to see what is actually being said. Every time you log in to an application, every time you walk into a building, that’s data. And so what people don’t realize is that there’s actually data all around us. We just have to open our eyes to see it.”

If government can overcome this cultural perception of what data is and who can use it, as well as acquire modern advanced reporting tools that could replace cumbersome legacy applications, the possibilities to improve services for citizens are endless. In the next section, we highlight a few of the main benefits of better data intelligence in the public sector.

“Think about this: Every time you fill out a form, that’s data. Every time you send an email, there’s data in there. There’s data about the email, there’s data that you’re transferring, you can do content analysis on it to see what is actually being said. And so what people don’t realize is that there’s actually data all around us. We just have to open our eyes to see it.”

Alan Webber

Research Director for IDC Government Insights

THE BENEFITS OF BETTER DATA INTELLIGENCE IN GOVERNMENT We’ve seen that better data intelligence is necessary in government, but that legacy BI tools often prevent collaboration, make it difficult to bring information from disparate systems together, and are not user-friendly. Clearly, moving from legacy technology to modern analytics solutions is critically important for the public sector to keep pace with the citizens it serves. The key is empowering everyone in your organization to use data to do their job better and make more informed decisions. Agencies need a tool that is as user friendly for business users as it is for employees with a deep data analysis background in order to solve problems from both a cultural and IT standpoint.

That’s where Salesforce’s Government Cloud Wave can help.

Government Cloud Wave is Salesforce’s data intelligence expansion pack for Government Cloud solutions. It gives government employees of all levels and abilities the modern, mobile analytical functionality they need to identify patterns, resolve issues and advance the mission – and it is included in their FedRAMP-approved cloud platform.

Wave shares the same code line as the Salesforce Government Cloud. The resulting solution is both an application and a platform: prebuilt apps deliver out-of-the-box dashboards allow users to analyze information from common fields —case management data, correspondence, project and financial data— with ease. When deployed as a platform, Wave incorporates data from third-party applications to gain broader insight. In both scenarios, actions and next steps can be executed directly from Wave’s dashboards, rounding out Salesforce Government Cloud solutions with advanced reporting capabilities.

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“I think government is at a crisis moment of accountability, transparency, and relevance for many of its stakeholders,” said Peter Doolan, Executive Vice President, Digital Transformation & Innovation at Salesforce. “You only have to look across government in most modern economies to see that citizens are demanding more of their governments. Government has to be more transparent and data intelligence can help.”

When an agency can take an “analytics for everybody” approach, this helps fill critical data skills shortages. Government HR no longer needs to be focused on hiring people with existing data analysis skills – as many employees could tackle the tasks.

Additionally, by bringing multi-vendor data together onto one platform, and serving it up in a highly visual, user-friendly interface, the platform allows any user to comprehend millions of rows of data and take action to make decisions.

“It’s a modern re-imagination of analytics in the cloud for government,” said Doolan. “It gives government the ability to capture data from any source, especially those that have an action bias for government.”

This kind of modern approach to gathering information and enabling insight is critical to today’s mission goals because of three key reasons.

MODERN MISSION COMPLEXITY NEEDS CONTEXTUAL ANALYTICS A single-platform solution helps employees to see context around data so that they can better understand the significance of the information presented, in context of their daily tasks and overall workload. Such capability helps users identify patterns and anticipate the likelihood of potential outcomes—a task that is increasingly difficult given the compounding data landscape. When analytical capabilities are made available within a work stream in a timely manner, employees are better enabled to bring together various data points across agencies and systems in an actionable way—piecing information together to reveal a bigger picture, and solve more complex problems.

Fusion centers are a perfect example: Fusion Centers are information sharing centers established by the Department of Homeland Security. They operate as state and major urban area

focal points for the receipt, analysis, gathering, and sharing of threat-related information between federal; state, local, tribal, territorial (SLTT); and private sector partners. In these centers, teams analyze various data points from a variety of systems, looking for correlations, commonalities, and patterns that reveal potential events. With this insight, Fusion Centers can alert law enforcement or advise emergency response teams as needed, helping to thwart attacks and provide faster service. Data helps turn reactive efforts into proactive protection.

Government needs to utilize a single-platform solution as it’s now critical to providing the right kind of accessibility and service in today’s increasingly connected world. It’s especially relevant in areas like security; the best attempt at making foresight 20/20.

Data Intelligence for Everyone: The Future of Analytics in the Public Sector

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LEAN GOVERNMENT MODELS REQUIRE MORE INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS TO MAKE DECISIONS EASIER Economics 101 teaches us you can move along the supply curve reflecting change in precisely where the balance exists between resource capacity and demand. If you discovered a new resource—oil, gold, etc.—you could shift the supply curve out, increasing your total capacity.

guides investments, and transforms government into a mission-centric organization. By maximizing this resource across the employee base, the department or agency increases their service capacity. Realizing data as a resource empowers teams to expand their potential to impact the mission.

Data is like that newly discovered resource that drives transparency, fosters data-driven decisions, and encourages engagement.

This kind of perspective develops a modern data management strategy that leverages the resource in way that unlocks insight,

Lean government budgets require a thoughtful, smart approach that uses all resources to their fullest, most efficient capacity.

Government as an industry has a vast amount of resourceful data at their fingertips, making economic-inspired goals a possibility.

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TAKE ACTION AND MOVE THE MISSION, FASTER The kind of granularity that comes from today’s data-rich environment means big potential for improving service targeting and quality. Take for example, AIR Louisville, a government program that uses sensor-laden inhalers to automatically track where and when residents’ breathing suffers most.

This data is then combined with that from two different networks: one of air sensor data from the EPA and one of micro-air samplers from around the Louisville area. The program then analyzes these combined data sets, giving local government the insight they need to identify and address sources of air quality issues.

AIR Louisville uses data to connect city resources and improve quality of life for their residents, serving as a perfect, modern

example of government’s mission: protect and serve the individual rights of each citizen. Data can help the mission address a person’s needs as an individual—with the scale required by the mission. Think of the good that can become of government data when it’s understood and acted upon in the best, most complete way possible.

Modern data reporting tools allow any user or employee to not only turn information into insight, but also to take action based off that insight, developing both behavior and mindsets that are truly data-driven. This helps the organization streamline processes and deliver higher quality, more targeted, more effective services. Data helps organizations deliver private sector innovation across public sector missions.

MAINTAINING COMPLIANCE ACROSS DATA INTELLIGENCE Data security is always a top priority for government. Many agencies use spreadsheets—which likely contain sensitive data such as PII, peak transit times, and more—to track progress and performance. These spreadsheets and their data are often being emailed back and forth to a variety of readers. Unfortunately, email is not always the most secure form of communication, and using email means that they’re not able to tell who accessed or downloaded that information.

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Industry Perspective

But with data intelligence in the cloud, you can grant access to reports based on role, group, and more traits. A cloud-based platform allows people to control who has access, can give people visibility into who did what with the information, and is all stored on a central, always-on platform. With a FedRAMP-certified data intelligence solution like Salesforce’s, that means no more risky email blasts for your sensitive spreadsheets.

CONCLUSION Government collects massive amounts of data. However, a variety of challenges have prevented government agencies from enabling their employees to use that data effectively to make better policy and operational decisions.

It no longer has to be that way.

When government agencies have the power to use analytics in a groundbreaking way, they can meet tasks that are critical to mission need: making better and more informed decisions; managing billions of dollars of taxpayer money in a smart and effective way; and providing a level of transparency that improves citizen trust.

“With user-friendly data intelligence tools that can be used by everyone, we are creating a data-driven and an intelligence-driven workforce who are anticipating the needs and requirements of their constituents versus reacting,” said Doolan. “That’s a fundamental shift in the culture for the better.”

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For more information about this report, please reach out to info@govloop.com.

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See how this can support departments and agencies as they transform the 21st century government mission.

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Data Intelligence for Everyone: The Future of Analytics in the Public Sector

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Industry Perspective