Flash Poll Series:
Data Management

We live in a Cambrian era of big data,” declared former U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer Beth Noveck in 2012. Four years later, her pronouncement is more relevant than ever. We’re at an unprecedented age in history: streams of unstructured data are generated by traffic cameras, security video, audio files, social media, search engine data, and beyond at incredible rates. While all this data has the potential to produce stunning insights, state organizations need to first address the initial step of storing and processing these vast swaths of raw data.

To learn more about the implications of this data explosion in state and local government, Government Business Council released a flash poll in July 2016 on the following question:

These days, the buzz is all about data. Check out any tech meetup or innovation conference, and you’ll find overwhelming consensus: data is our most powerful resource in uncovering key business insights and driving change. However, simply possessing data isn’t enough. In order to unlock value from enterprise data, the public and private sectors need to establish, communicate, and implement a comprehensive data management strategy across the organization.

With their central role in providing and enhancing citizen services, state and local government organizations have a lot to gain from data — but how effectively are they communicating data management processes to the employees tasked with implementing them?

In order to answer this question, Government Business Council took a closer look at state and local data management with a July 2016 flash poll:

163 state and local leaders representing various organizations responded to the poll. According to the results, organizations are at different stages of communicating a data management strategy to employees: 27 percent say that their organization has communicated a strategy and is providing employees with the training/resources they need to implement it, 22 percent say their organization has communicated a strategy but has yet to provide more specific implementation guidance, 15 percent say that their organization is still in the process of mapping out a strategy; and 21 percent say that data management is not a priority within their organization.

Approximately 3.6 million social security numbers and 387,000 credit and debit numbers were exposed as a result of a 2012 hack on the South Carolina Department of Revenue. The attack forms only a small piece of a growing tapestry of public sector data breaches, and, apprehensive at the possibility of being the next big headline story, state and local organizations are increasingly investing in enhanced security capabilities. But not all threats can be prevented, and in addition to maintaining perimeter defense, it is imperative that organizations simultaneously focus on their post-breach game plan.

In order to assess state and local data and recovery processes, Government Business Council released a flash poll in July 2016 on the following question:

165 state and local leaders representing various organizations responded to the poll. According to the results, 48 percent of respondents feel confident or very confident in their organization’s backup and recovery processes, 33 percent are somewhat confident, and 16 percent are not very or not at all confident.