The US Department of Defense (DoD) has the largest operating budget in the world — it runs the most expansive commissary and retail systems and manages global supply chain of resources, people, and critical equipment and parts. All this adds up to immense levels of operational complexity, mountains of data, and a significant challenge when it comes to auditing the functional effectiveness across the Department. “These audits are a driving force for reaching the Department’s transformation goals,” says Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) and Chief Financial Officer Michael McCord. “Findings from the audits catalyze change by spotlighting areas that need improvement and giving Department leaders the information they need to prioritize modernization efforts and effect meaningful, long-term change.”
The recently completed FY 2021 DoD Audit was extensive and utilized more than 1,200 auditors, 278 in-person site visits, and 1,069 virtual site visits to review DoD business processes and activities. Auditors requested approximately 34,000 documents and tested approximately 55,000 samples. Critical to this audit and recent previous audits was the ability to provide the DoD with a democratized data and analytics capability through Trifacta that:
- Scaled to support more than 7,000 users and 1,200 different systems.
- Reduced multi-month processes down to weeks using self-service and automation.
- Eliminated data quality errors while improving process speed and scale.
With the implementation of the Federal Data Strategy, the creation of agency-specific frameworks for the more expansive and ethical use of data and AI, and executive branch management directives, all agencies within the US Federal Government are under some level of imperative to modernize their approach to data, the automation of processes, and the upskilling of their existing resources form a data literacy perspective. All these efforts are meant to improve and modernize how the US Federal Government can:
- Leverage the increasing volume, variety, and importance of data as a strategic asset.
- Shifts from low-value to high-value work, increasing efficiency and lowering cost.
- Equip the 21st century government workforce, from executives to front-line workers, to instantly analyze vast amounts of data to make informed decisions.
For example, agencies like NASA are setting up agency-wide, enterprise-wide shared data environments and democratized analytic capabilities. The criticality of data is infused into every function at NASA — from experiments to mission planning to understanding the effects of climate change — and is reliant on having access to data. Data is at the core of digital transformation efforts, and it underlies the four core trusts at the Agency related to transforming the culture and the workforce, to building Machine Learning and AI capabilities, to enhancing “what if” scenario model building and automating processes.
With the recent completed acquisition of Trifacta by Alteryx, government agencies have a partner that can help them navigate the paradigm shift focused on leveraging data for advanced analytics as keys to their strategic modernization efforts.
With the combined capabilities of Trifacta and Alteryx, government agencies will benefit from an integrated end-to-end, low code/no code analytics automation platform, serving the needs of the entire enterprise: data analytics teams, IT/data engineering teams, and business users.
Trifacta brings game-changing integration with cloud data warehouses like Snowflake and purpose-built architecture for all three major public cloud providers, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, and Microsoft Azure.
Alteryx intends to combine its leading low code/no code analytics solution with Trifacta’s cloud-native capabilities to offer flexible deployment options — on-premises, hybrid, and cloud — to meet enterprise customers’ analytics needs. Alteryx will also continue to invest in its Designer and Server products, providing customers with deployment flexibility for their analytic workloads.
Long known for its self-service capabilities for automating data access, preparation, analytics and data science processes, Alteryx has been steadily enhancing and expanding its platform to make it even more accessible and attractive to a wider base of customers. Alteryx is already helping a number of government agencies in their efforts to democratize analytics and accelerate mission outcomes including the FAA, the US Census Bureau, the DOD and LA County. The combination of Alteryx and Trifacta’s cloud-native platform will help improve appeal to data engineers and IT teams, while adding important cloud-native capabilities to accelerate the pace of democratized analytics.