Kevin Tierney 0:06
Hello, and welcome to the Government Technology Insider Podcast. I’m your host Kevin Tierney and today we’re talking about data management specifically about how data management plays an increasingly more important role in the modern federal IT environment. It comes as no surprise that the federal government already had a lot of data at its disposal. However, in this increasingly digitized world, there has been a tremendous influx of new data passing through government hands. So in this changing environment, how can federal agencies effectively store and manage their data. To help us understand the challenges that federal IT teams are facing? We are joined today by Dan Carroll, field CTO for cybersecurity US Federal at Dell Technologies. Dan’s career long focus on developing and managing comprehensive cybersecurity solutions places him in a unique position to offer his insights on this topic. Dan, thank you so much for joining us today.

Dan Carroll 0:55
Thank you. I’m glad to be here.

Kevin Tierney 0:57
So let’s just go ahead and jump right into our questions. As I said in the intro, we see a challenging IT environment and not just in federal it, but across the entire IT landscape. In your opinion, how do federal agencies keep up with these changes?

Dan Carroll 1:11
Yeah, so this is a great question. What I’ve seen in working with federal agencies is they don’t realize the number of assets or capabilities they already have at their disposal, what solutions they’ve already put in place. I obviously have a very cyber focused mind on this. But in talking with my partners who work in, you know, more cloud specific or AI/ML regions, it isn’t uncommon for them to see the same thing. So what happens with government contracting and purchasing is that generally, they will design lots of solutions and purchase lots of solutions. And each of those solutions has a very specific outcome that that purchasing is focused on. Well, what usually happens though, is once they’ve done that, and they put it in place, there was a lot of other capability within that system that they could be leveraging to help them achieve various goals within their cybersecurity framework. Within the compute infrastructure, did they enable all of the features that the OEM provides around monitoring and logging? Did they enable the different capabilities around component validation? Did they enable and lock down and security hardening the system to protect against outsider threats and insider threats? Generally, surprisingly, the answer is no, because that wasn’t what was in scope of what was being purchased. So the the integrator or OEMs, or solution providers may not have told them about all that additional capability. So that is definitely one area that the federal agencies should be looking at is what do I have on the truck today? And am I using it effectively are at all to achieve my goals. In the bigger scope of things, the one of the other things that are really going to want to get their hands around for any activities, whether it’s AI and machine learning, whether it’s extending or improving their multicloud models, whether it’s any other kind of digital transformation, like implementing 5g data governance, data governance is without a doubt, the quiet monster that is scaring, you know, not just federal IT solution, solutions and solution providers, but commercial as well. The reason being is there is so much data created from so many disparate sources and understanding where those sources are understanding who owns them, the sensitivity and classification of those sources. And ensuring appropriate access is daunting. Unfortunately, it’s critical in order for them to be able to move forward.

Kevin Tierney 3:53
So in the face of the daunting challenge, what might agencies do to make these processes easier for them, especially now in 2022?

Dan Carroll 4:02
Yeah, so as it relates to what they would invest in to make 2022 easier. Data governance, like I just said, is a big component of that. So looking at where they’re going with any of their projects, is security and data governance part of their scope within the projects, regardless of what that project is, because there are a lot of, obviously the executive order from the president that came down last year on cybersecurity and national defense is a key component. So they’re all thinking about zero trust and how to do that. And if they think about it at the beginning of a project or in anything they’re purchasing, it’s going to help them rather than trying to tack it on later. Same thing with data governance, right. If you’ve defined it data governance model and how you identify and handle all that data that is tied to this new project coming in that it will make it easier later for you to just kind of roll that into your existing process first trying to put a whole system in, generate a bunch of data, and then you go, Oh, no, I gotta figure out how to classify this. Right. So as always, pre-planning helps for better performance, right?

Kevin Tierney 5:08
Absolutely. So let’s unpack that a bit more. How can federal agencies approach you know, their pre-planning to really make the most of their investments?

Dan Carroll 5:17
What I would say to make the most of those investments. One thing is don’t reinvent the wheel. I would say over the last couple of decades, I have a long history within the federal government, you know, working both as a United States Marine, you know, I was active duty for eight years and then working as a contractor for the federal government for a number of years after that, and serving the government community for a couple of decades now. The biggest shift that I’ve seen over over all this time is the move from GOTS to COTS right. So from government developed solutions to commercial off the shelf solutions, right. And I think that has really helped the federal IT industry. And federal agencies be able to more effectively harness technology, and use it to their advantage to include being able to more quickly take advantage of newer technologies in a more effective way. What I mean by that is use existing architectures don’t go and try to invent your own, the National Institute of Standards and Technologies, Cybersecurity Center of Excellence. They’re doing some wonderful work to help define standard architectures from everything like multi cloud to hybrid cloud to private cloud, to secure 5g, they’re even looking forward into how to deal with quantum cryptology. And some of the challenges faced there. Using a lot of the work that they and similar agencies have done to try to establish standards that can be used both by commercial and federal agencies, is a is something that every IT organization within the federal government should be thinking about. The reason being is because most of the time these are proven, right? If you’re using something that you know already works, and it’s been shown to work, you’re going to be much better than trying to think that oh, I have a special situation here. So I need to make myself a special solution. That very seldom is the case.

Kevin Tierney 7:21
Dan and I continue our conversation in part two of this podcast series, where we dive into what exactly a digital first government is, what it takes to enable it, and how partners like Dell Technologies are helping to address the data management dilemma, but that is going to do it for us here today. To learn more about the best practices, lessons learned and proven strategies for using innovative technologies to address the challenges faced by federal, state and local governments, please visit government technology insider.com I’m Kevin Tierney. And until we meet again, so long.