Spreadsheets are structured things: They have clearly defined lines, cleanly labelled columns, and rules that govern what goes where. Government analytic programs have become skilled at working within those parameters, even if it means spending hours manually manipulating data to fit. Spreadsheets are what Andy MacIsaac, Solutions Marketing Director for the Public Sector with Alteryx, calls “30-year-old desktop technology.” But other data exists, doesn’t it? The world is full of PDF documents, audio and video files, social media posts and other “messy” data sources — the unstructured data that most agencies overlook. And most agency analytics programs are fragmented and overly manual. Recent innovations seek to change this.
Making Connections
“We need to modernize … and democratize the approach to analytics within organizations,” MacIsaac said, to eliminate the divide between data experts and the people on the business end of agency operations. Organizations must curtail their use of manual systems and leverage all available data, structured and unstructured. “It’s all about using that data to create the complete insights that you need to make sure people are getting the support and services they need, and uncover potential problems that you never thought existed,” he explained. Alteryx — which MacIsaac heard one client describe as the “Swiss Army knife” of data analytics — ingests data from different sources and manages it throughout an analytics lifecycle. That includes cleaning “dirty” data (e.g., removing duplicates) and applying descriptive, predictive, geospatial or other analytic approaches, using a single platform.
A Real Difference
Consider the state of Ohio. Residents often were unaware that they qualified for more than one social services program, such as Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and the Women Infant and Children (WIC) program. Alteryx, through the work of a solution provider, helped Ohio compile enrollment data from multiple programs, matching identities, eliminating discrepancies and cross-checking information. The state identified and contacted roughly 77,000 people who likely qualified for benefits they were not receiving. MacIsaac said the overriding question was, “how do we … increase the social safety net, to make sure that the most vulnerable of our population are getting the services they need?”
Empowering Employees
The public sector has trouble attracting and retaining top talent, so managers should reevaluate how much time their existing employees spend on manual, mundane tasks that pull them away from higher-value work, said MacIsaac. And with a shortage of data scientists, agencies should adopt analytics platforms that everyone can use. “You have some very capable people within your organizations,” he observed, “and if you … enable them with the right technology, they’re going to be able to do some pretty impactful things.” Regardless of technical acumen, an individual can use an Alteryx analytics platform to answer questions that drive mission outcomes. In turn, that enhances employee skillsets, democratizes agency data, and makes analytics a team sport, he said.
This article appears in our guide, “How to Change Things up (and Make It Stick).” To read more about ways to innovate successfully, download it here:
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