This post is excerpted from GovLoop’s recent guide, Preparing for the Era of Digital Transformation.
An Interview with Danny Pidutti, Vice President of Product and Solutions Marketing, Nuxeo
The digital age has led to an explosion of different types of information. While government has been focused largely on big data and structured data sets, the more than 85 percent of unstructured data (aka content) and the impact it has on the operations of government has largely been ignored. From serving citizens, to mission readiness, to day-to-day operations, being able to effectively find and manage content for use in real-time decision making is critical.
Most agencies are accustomed to managing PDF files, Word documents and other standard text inputs. However, traditional legacy content management systems and processes are incapable of keeping up with the task of managing the growing diversity, increasing size and the volume of digital rich media content (video, audio, etc.) that is being rapidly produced by citizens and agencies. IDC Research reports that digital data will grow at a compounded rate of 42 percent through 2020.
Managing all these new, unstructured forms of content requires a modern approach including a shift away from legacy enterprise content management technologies to a content services platform that can handle the scale and variety of this information.
To get a better understanding of why government needs a comprehensive content services platform and what it should look like, GovLoop sat down with Danny Pidutti, Vice President of Product and Solutions Marketing at Nuxeo.
When it comes to legacy content management systems, they tend to be siloed — making it difficult for agencies to view content in a holistic manner. Also, many of the systems only store content with no capability of tagging the content, searching for it or putting it to work through business processes.
“Every agency has multiple systems that store content,” Pidutti said. “And, if you have 20 or 30 of these systems across various departments, trying to get a single view of all that content becomes problematic.”
Additionally, these systems are ill-equipped to process larger sizes of content. An HD video is 10 million times the size of a text file and a law enforcement agency may need to process 24-hour video surveillance, but that requires a system capable of dealing with massive quantities of content. Being able to quickly and easily access information from that video could be a make or break that agency’s attempt to catch a criminal. That’s why modern content services are vital to a government agency’s mission and modernizing content systems should be a part of every agency’s digital transformation efforts.
“Bringing all of this content together is of critical importance,” Pidutti said. “You need that single view. When there are no content or data silos, leaders can make better decisions faster, using the latest information.”
Agencies should take a less tactical approach to modernizing their content systems and think more strategically. “It’s not about putting additional content storage or adding a management suite to your existing infrastructure. You need a system that builds in a content strategy looking at the next 10 to 20 years.”
“We like to talk about managing content in place,” Pidutti said. “A rip and replace of legacy content management systems never works out well. You have content stored in multiple systems like Sharepoint, cloud storage systems and in business applications like case management systems.”
Pidutti emphasize the need for a highly scalable, modern content services platform that can integrate with existing systems and allow you to aggregate and manage all that information without having to migrate it into a single repository. “You now have the advantage of keeping existing business applications up and running while your day forward applications can look at a complete, holistic 360-degree view of your content on a single content services platform,” he said.
The platform should also have advanced metadata tools that offer a complete metadata model capable of handling the volume of tags AI and machine learning tools produce when describing content. This capability allows law enforcement and security agencies, for example, to aggregate detailed identifiers from pictures and videos like a type of watch, a hat or details of a place, which can help them locate criminals faster.
Finally, agencies should ensure the platform has an advanced and highly configurable access control system including metadata-based security profiles for their span of users. “This ensures individuals only receive the information they need or should have access to,” Pidutti said.
Content management modernization is a project that should be a priority for every agency. With a strategic approach and the right content services platform, agencies can securely, effectively and easily manage all their information in one place so leaders can make informed decisions, faster to better serve citizens and deliver on their mission.
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