It was just a few years ago that federal agencies were trying to figure out how to control shadow IT—those unordained IT applications and systems used by employees without explicit approval or knowledge of IT departments. Shadow IT represented a major concern for the federal government and industry alike for the increased security and data exfiltration risks it presented. Like shadow IT, the element of Dark data lingers over federal agencies but represents a far greater security risk.
Unlike shadow IT, Dark data also represents an opportunity for significant value.
Dark data is all the unknown and untapped data across an organization—varying from data from IT infrastructure to sensor data from industrial HVAC systems—which is collected, but not used. This could mean the data is simply ignored by operations staff and leadership alike, or is collected by operations staff but never reaches the leaders who could use it for organization-level insights. Either way, what characterizes dark data is that it exists, but the people who need it don’t know where it is or don’t have access to it and therefore aren’t using it.
Splunk’s latestState of Dark Data report revealed that public sector IT leaders are struggling with this very issue. Data is a far-reaching element that touches all aspects of an organization. This presents an opportunity cost too high to ignore: Control over data is both a risk-mitigating activity and a value-adding one. The more data you have, the more you understand potential threats as well as how your organization operates.
So why aren’t agencies doing everything to capitalize on their data?
The Data’s Dark, but Full of Opportunities
Dark data is the result of years of turbulent data strategy, IT management and governance. No one is to blame for dark data’s prevalence: It’s hard balancing numerous responsibilities and the rapid proliferation of digital technology in government. As mission requirements have changed over the years, this often leads to complex and siloed digital ecosystems that are not easily managed.
The result is many agencies lack the comprehensive data strategy and data visibility they now need. Although the government is working to address the problem, a solution remains unclear as the Federal Data Strategy’sYear-1 Action Plan is still working to implement comprehensive data governance and ethics strategies.
