Some will argue that COVID has forced federal agencies to move to the cloud and drastically increased remote access.  One of the unintended consequences of this transition is a realization that the data that is created in these environments must be managed much better than in traditional, on-premises circumstances.

If agencies are all on the same page with classifying and managing data, that will reduce friction and allow agencies to get the maximum benefit of all this data and understand patterns and trends.

Hannah Hunt is the Chief Product and Innovation Officer for the Army Software Factory.  They are the leading edge at agile software development in a highly secure environment. To rapidly develop solutions, they may spin up environments where data exists for an hour.  Given those constraints, it only makes sense to have continuous security and continuous compliance with the data.

One obstacle to being able to work with data sets in an extremely flexible environment is starting with effective data management.

Unfortunately, in the commercial world and the federal government, a lot of data management is still manual.  No systems administrator would pause to automate the production of a new virtual environment, but eyebrows are raised when data is managed in an automated manner.

During the discussion, the topic of Shadow IT was brought up.  For example, if a system is set up for compliance and it takes days to get answers.

Human beings, as they will, will find ways to circumvent these compliance models and subvert the system.

That is why Dan Graves from Delphix suggests that if you produce a data management system that is compliant and fast, that will reduce the temptation for end users to set up apps that are independent of the compliance requirements.