How public sector benefit from big data

Now that the dust around the local elections has settled, the spotlight will be on the various municipalities to prove that they are worthy of the public’s votes, writes Gary de Menezes, NetApp country manager for southern Africa.
Enhanced service delivery will no doubt be top-of-mind for all South Africans. One of the key approaches that government can adopt to meet their campaign promises is by making the most of the significant volume of data that they have.
There’s no doubt that the amount of data at our disposal is increasing every year. IT departments, including those of the public sector, have to be equipped to handle this volume. While smart cities present a huge opportunity to enhance metropolises, and provide considerable information about their inhabitants, the data they create needs to be properly managed and IT infrastructure must be robust.
This infrastructure needs to be able to integrate existing enterprise storage silos so that all data within the organisation can be processed. In addition, many companies use different storage tiers, such as disk and Flash, and use resources from the cloud. Here, integration is key to make sure all of the different platforms are optimised and working together. Cloud technologies enable the public sector to be citizen-centric, as they lend themselves to customisation, agility and effectiveness. In addition, the cloud enables new services and flexible scaling.
Many municipalities also collect a lot of private data on behalf of their constituents. Certain levels of domestic and international data storage and compliance standards therefore need to be adhered to, as the public sector can become a popular target due to the nature of the data it has. Losing this information would have a severe impact, losing trust and misusing tax money.
There are various levels of risk pertaining to different types of data, which will influence the IT infrastructure solution that public sector organisations should choose with regards to on-premises versus cloud. In any case, as a prudent IT strategist, each CIO requires airtight security and complete control over data, at all times. Organisations are searching for the right blend of availability, security, and efficiency. The answer lies in achieving the perfect balance of on-premises, private cloud, and public services to match IT and business requirements.
One of the suitable solutions for implementing a multi-cloud infrastructure for big data is NetApp’s Data Fabric concept. Organisations can use cloud resources from different vendors, while retaining full control over their data. The use of cloud resources puts IT departments in a position to integrate the most powerful data analysis engines without investing big money in a new on-premises IT infrastructure.
The technologies from NetApp support enterprise-wide data management and create a link between on-premises systems and resources from the public cloud. As a result, organisations achieve high flexibility in the use of their IT resources and can move data and workloads across all resources. This creates the basis for the efficient infrastructure that is necessary for big data projects that build the foundation for open data initiatives and enable smarter cities.
If a suitable IT infrastructure can be implemented to cope with the huge influx of data from smart cities, then it will have the ability to transform the way South Africa’s public sector organisations operate and what they are capable of doing in future.