Solution Brief
Data-driven government
Digital initiatives across government provide unprecedented opportunities for increased efficiency and innovation. The cost reduction and enhanced customer experience that derive from streamlining citizen interactions are coupled with the promise of better cross-departmental collaboration.
Digital initiatives across government provide unprecedented opportunities for increased efficiency and innovation. The cost reduction and enhanced customer experience that derive from streamlining citizen interactions are coupled with the promise of better cross-departmental collaboration. However, the challenges of enormous data growth, data sharing, legacy systems integration and information security need to be resolved to enable the full benefit of these initiatives to be realised.
Throughout the public sector, digital initiatives and "channel shift" offer the potential to both reduce transaction costs and improve the availability and quality of services. However, it is recognised that digital transformation is more than simply moving existing services online. It requires major redesign of existing processes and systems which place greater demands on existing IT systems and may be at odds with the need to reduce operational budgets and minimise staff costs.
Features and Benefits
The capabilities that set Data-driven government apart.
The growing importance of data
Data as a strategic asset
Whichever deployment method is adopted, data is the strategic asset which must be securely stored, yet made available to deliver the much sought-after inter and intra-agency sharing and collaboration. This is evidenced by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sports (DCMS) establishing the National Data Strategy and the appointment of Chief Data Officers in major organisations.
Pressure on leaders
Leaders are under enormous pressure to harness today's volume of data and apply it to create new value across the entire organisation – all within limited skills and budgets – and whilst preserving the trust of citizens. It is recognised that digital transformation in most cases requires IT transformation.
Hybrid cloud risk
The risk of a hybrid cloud model is the potential of creating "islands of data" stored on different platforms in different locations with different standards. This leads to greater levels of security risk and the potential for duplication of information with an inability to exploit the data for analysis and further innovation.
Common challenges across a hybrid cloud
Inability to move data
After an organisation's data has been stored in a particular cloud, it is often difficult and costly to move it to a different provider.
Inconsistent data management and standards
Each environment has a different set of tools and management software that make it difficult to apply consistent policies to data. IT staff must learn how to use all of these tools and applications to operate effectively.
Limited choice
New technologies and services that do not integrate with existing environments are difficult to adopt. As a result, organisations have limited technology choices and an inability to exploit new technologies and capabilities.
Lack of control
Data is a business-critical asset for all public sectors organisations. IT must be the stewards of that data no matter where it is. Storing that data in a cloud where there is little visibility into how it is protected and governed can introduce unacceptable risk.
NetApp Data Fabric Capabilities
Discover
Discover resources and understand the current state of the data, applications, systems and services.
Integrate
Integrate disparate data services so that they can be managed in a coherent way.
Automate
Automate operations and define rules so that the fabric can take care of itself.
Optimise
Optimise the fabric over time by monitoring and reacting to changes over time.
Protect
Protect data through effective backup and recovery.
Secure
Secure data everywhere to simplify compliance, preserve integrity and control access.
How NetApp Data Fabric supports IT leaders in government
Accelerates digital transformation
Accelerates digital transformation initiatives by increasing the velocity of test/development activities to reduce the "time-to-market" for new services.
Accelerates cloud first policy
Accelerates the adoption of a "cloud first" policy without increasing data governance and security risks.
Enhances organisational agility
Enhances organisational agility by allowing cloud services to be turned on/off in response to changing business demands and/or changes in economics and by delivering the agility/elasticity of the cloud but with the control and management of an internal private cloud.
Reduces lifecycle data management costs
Reduces lifecycle data management costs by utilising a common data management platform from inception through to archive; high-performance strategic applications through to large scale information repositories.
Reduces IT staff costs
Reduces IT staff costs by utilising a single data management tool across clouds, leveraging the significant pool of existing NetApp experience within UK public sector entities.
Supports austerity measures
Supports austerity measures by reducing the costs associated with data storage.
Avoiding cloud lock-in
Reducing cloud storage
Reducing the amount of cloud storage required by automatically compressing and de-duplicating data.
Efficient backup copies
Providing efficient backup copies of data which consume very little incremental storage.
Reduced data transfer costs
Reducing data transfer costs through the utilisation of the highly-efficient NetApp replication technology.
Consistent data management tools
Providing consistent data management tools for managing on-premise and cloud storage.
Accelerated application development
Accelerating application development by supporting the latest dev ops workflows and methodologies.
Visibility of cloud costs
Providing visibility of cloud costs through a single management portal.
Securing business-critical data
Backup and recovery criticality
From collecting population data to preserving patient records to collecting tax receipts, government generates significant quantities of data that needs to be stored and kept safe in case of a disaster. Backup and recovery is critical to the successful operation of any IT system. The loss of data has operational and monetary implications and can set an organisation back years in terms of research and operations – representing an unacceptable loss of time and money – and potentially impacting public trust.
Cloud-based backup/DR
Backup/DR is emerging as one of the most viable use cases for the cloud. Sending backup data into the cloud can eliminate common backup problems and provides additional flexibility in the event of a disaster. As data does not need to be routinely accessed, on-going costs are minimized and once in the cloud, the data will remain there until you need to access it. Furthermore, data can be protected with the newest security technologies available (such as encryption) which protects against unauthorised access.
Seamless integration
Building a data fabric can help government organisations seamlessly integrate cloud-based backup and recovery into an overarching data management strategy. By avoiding the need to use proprietary software, organisations can leverage their investment in existing software tools with the option of creating a local backup repository if required. Advanced de-duplication and compression saves network bandwidth and the use of encryption for data "in flight" and "at rest" protects against unauthorised access. By using an "incremental forever" backup strategy, the need for periodic full backups is eliminated - which in turn reduces backup windows and provides faster data recovery as well as reducing the storage capacity requirements at the destination.
Preserved investment
By preserving the investment in existing tools, scripts and processes, the NetApp solution also reduces on-going administration costs by avoiding the need for re-training etc.
Accelerating key business applications
Increased performance
Increasing the performance of key online transactional applications.
Maintained availability
Maintaining availability at peak times and ensuring quality of service of business-critical services.
Up-to-the-minute developer copies
Providing developers with up-to-the-minute copies of production data for test purposes with little implication to performance or cost as well as tight integration with open source automation and deployment tools such as Docker, Flocker, Mesos etc.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Accelerate Your Data Pipeline
- Get up and running faster with the NetApp ONTAP AI validated reference architecture from NVIDIA and NetApp.
- Increase training throughput—up to four times faster than competing solutions.
Streamline DataOps
Automate the deployment of Kubernetes on NVIDIA DGX supercomputers with Ansible modules for NetApp.
- Enable persistent storage for Kubernetes with Trident.
Simplify Version Control for Machine Learning
- Monitor and track every version of your experiments using fast, space-efficient NetApp Snapshot copies.
Tap into the Cloud
- Take advantage of innovative AI software in the world's largest clouds, while retaining NetApp data management and NFS capabilities.
AI potential in government
Artificial intelligence (AI) has tremendous potential to improve the lives of citizens and help government organizations deliver on their missions—reducing pollution, saving and generating energy, improving safety and privacy, improving public health, enhancing agricultural outcomes, enabling smart transportation, and optimizing infrastructure.
Current AI usage
Most government organizations are using AI in some way today, starting with foundational applications such as voice assistants, chatbots, and big data analytics. For example, the U.S. Postal Service uses handwriting recognition technologies to sort mail by ZIP code. In the UK, a recent study by NetApp found that over 50% of NHS Trusts are using AI to alleviate the pressures placed on healthcare workers, to improve the quality of care and fast-track medicine delivery to patients.
Expert Guidance
Thrive with expert-led storage guidance
Get tailored advice on how Data-driven government fits your environment — from sizing and deployment to long-term optimization.
Technical Specifications
Exhaustive hardware and software metrics extracted directly from official documentation.
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Public Cloud ProvidersAWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform
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Deployment ModelHybrid cloud
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Service Provider NetworkMore than 250 service providers across the globe
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Validated Reference ArchitectureNetApp ONTAP AI from NVIDIA and NetApp
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Training ThroughputUp to four times faster than competing solutions
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Kubernetes DeploymentAutomated on NVIDIA DGX supercomputers with Ansible modules for NetApp
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Persistent Storage for KubernetesTrident
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Version ControlNetApp Snapshot copies
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Data ReductionAutomatic compression and de-duplication
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EncryptionData "in flight" and "at rest"
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Backup StrategyIncremental forever
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ReplicationHighly-efficient NetApp replication technology
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DevOps IntegrationDocker, Flocker, Mesos
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UK Government GuidanceCloud Guide jointly published by Crown Commercial Services and Government Digital Service (GDS)
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UK National Data StrategyEstablished by Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sports (DCMS)
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NHS AI AdoptionOver 50% of NHS Trusts are using AI
Learn more
Explore resources
Datasheets, whitepapers, case studies, and technical documentation.
Explore resources