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MDEC launches DataKITA initiative
Thailand to get new data centre worth THB700 million
The New Zealand government is investing $84.7 million in innovative research projects including those focusing on health, climate change, astronomy and the impact of big data on social equality said Research, Science and Innovation Minister Megan Woods.
This year’s Marsden Fund will support 134 new projects including explorations of the connection between heart failure and diabetes, the financial risks of climate change and the complex interplay between Maori settlers and ecosystems through the history of mahinga kai (traditional foods).
The minister said that they have designed the funding so it can address real-world problems, while also giving researchers the freedom to innovate and come up with new ways to solve problems. problems. Health issues like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Disease are wide-ranging problems and require innovative thinking. Healthtech is the biggest secondary technology sector in New Zealand, generating NZ$1.8 billion of revenue and a five-year compound annual growth rate of 10% in 2018. With deep scientific and commercial expertise, New Zealand’s healthtech sector is strong and will continue to contribute world-leading technologies to address the health needs of citizens across the globe.
Research needs to look at these issues from different angles to ensure that the best is being done for the future of the country. She felt that successful applicants were doing significant work in their areas of science that would benefit New Zealand’s long-term future.
Marsden Fund research benefits society as a whole by contributing to the development of researchers with knowledge, skills and ideas. The Fund supports research excellence in science, engineering and maths, social sciences and the humanities. The Marsden Fund was established by the government in 1994 to fund excellent fundamental research. It is a contestable fund administered by the Royal Society of New Zealand on behalf of the Marsden Fund Council. The research is not subject to the government’s socio-economic priorities but is investigator-initiated.
New Zealand has an established and clear data strategy and roadmap for the nation. The strategy and roadmap are intended to provide a shared direction and plan that organisations within and outside government can collectively work towards and align their efforts to generate maximum impact. It acknowledges that there is a need for greater alignment and coordination of effort across the system. The government understands that global data growth enables innovative data uses that are transforming the world and that In New Zealand is uniquely positioned to maximise the value of data
The government agrees that it has a unique role to play in laying the groundwork for the future data system. The roadmap envisages a future where data is regarded as an essential part of New Zealand’s infrastructure and where data use is underpinned by public trust and confidence. As such, greater data use needs to be balanced with the protection of privacy rights and ethical use.
The strategy is designed to unlock the value of data for the benefit of New Zealanders. It will start by directing activity in focus areas to deliver the most impact:
- Focus area 1: Invest in making the right data available at the right time
- Focus area 2. Grow data capability and support good practice
- Focus area 3. Build partnerships within and outside government
- Focus area 4. Implement open and transparent practices
In other data-related developments, the Open Government Information and Data Programme ended in July 2020. However, this did not signal the end of the government’s commitment to open data. Instead, it marked the transition from a time-boxed programme into on-going government-wide coordination of efforts, led by the Government Chief Data Steward.
The programme is a cross-government programme designed to accelerate the release and reuse of open government data to maximise the value of that data.
At the closing of the Open Government Data Programme, Stats NZ commissioned an independent reviewer to produce an Independent review of the Open Data Programme. The report focused on two key things:
- an assessment of the programme’s operation and performance against its expected outcomes
- recommendations based on lessons learnt that may inform the work of future cross-government data programmes.
The closure report is an output from direct comments and feedback from the interviews and analysis from the independent reviewer.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) announced today the launch of a S$35 million Productivity Solutions Grant (PSG) for the financial services sector to help smaller financial institutions adopt digital solutions for more streamlined data reporting to MAS.
The grant is currently applicable to banks and will be subsequently expanded to include insurers and capital market intermediaries.
Support for smaller financial institutions to adopt regulatory reporting solutions
The PSG provides funding support for smaller financial institutions to adopt regulatory reporting solutions from pre-approved managed service providers.
These technologies will facilitate more efficient processes for the preparation and submission of data, in line with regulatory requirements.
Mr Sopnendu Mohanty, Chief FinTech Officer, MAS, said, “The co-funding support for the adoption of regulatory reporting solutions will help smaller financial institutions leverage technology to better meet regulatory obligations. There are now a range of grant schemes specific to smaller financial institutions. Together, these schemes provide strong support for these financial institutions to adopt solutions that improve their operational capabilities in various domains.”
Productivity Solutions Grant to co-fund 30% of cost of digital solutions
The PSG will co-fund up to 30% of qualifying expenses for the adoption of digital solutions from the pre-approved managed service solution providers, capped at $250,000 per project for banks. Eligible banks can now apply for funding via the Business Grants Portal.
Smaller financial institutions that wish to adopt digital solutions outside of regulatory reporting can consider the Digital Acceleration Grant (DAG).
This grant is part of MAS’ recent initiatives to support smaller financial institutions in their efforts to improve productivity.
Public sectors across the world will receive help in harnessing the power of analytics in the cloud through a new strategic partnership between an American analytics software developer and an American multinational technology company is helping the public sector.
The advent of robust analytics and flexible cloud strategies is giving governments the ability and the agility to stand on equal ground with the nimbler private sector — particularly during the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Director of Global Government Practice at the analytics software developer stated that never before have enterprises adapted and transformed as rapidly as they have since the arrival of COVID-19. In the private sector, these decisions have come relatively easily, even if the execution is hard — meet the customer where they are, expand infrastructure to meet the ballooning digital demand, and enable legions of employees to work remotely.
However, to truly understand the scale of the moment, watch as governments — sometimes perceived as slow to adopt digital transformation — become agile champions of the cloud.
To help governments achieve this, the analytics software developer has formed a strategic partnership with the tech giant to combine and harness the power of the former’s data analytics capabilities and the latter’s flexible Azure cloud environment.
Of course, analytics and cloud are not new concepts, but what’s different is the urgent move away from siloed and legacy infrastructures that are simply not capable of reacting fast enough in the current environment.
The Worldwide Director of Smart Infrastructure at the tech giant has spent the past 15 years helping cities around the world build innovative solutions using cloud-native analytics. He says he can see clearly how the future will be defined by data analytics, particularly with the Internet of Things taking off and the data flood beginning.
For someone to make sense of all that data and see patterns in it is a monumental challenge — let alone making predictions from it. There’s so much potential with the analytics software developer, who has that inherent knowledge of understanding and interpreting data analytics, with the ability to execute on that data.
And of course, when talking about government-held data, compliance and security are at the top of the list of requirements, making the tech giant’s certified Azure solutions all the more important. Azure provides control of the data, and the analytics software developer’s Viya — a data analytics platform designed for Azure — enables analytics across the entire spectrum.
Public-sector analytics in the IoT age
One may not think of a government or city council as having a large IoT estate but think of light poles, luminaires, air quality sensors, water meters and water quality management systems. All of these are connected and generating a huge amount of data.
Keeping on top of these assets and sensors is vitally important for city, state and federal governments, especially those committed to dealing with climate change or other serious challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
Pandemics, the present one or any other, seem tailor-made for analytics solutions. The analytics software developer is using analytics to find anomalies in public health, figure out how to optimise hospital bed usage, and manage a supply chain for personal protective equipment in the wake of COVID-19.
And then there are other fields such as fraud prevention, crime investigation and so on, which also are ideally suited to analytics solutions.
The possibilities of powerful analytics in government are truly exciting, the Director of Global Government Practice stated. The company’s focus now is helping those public institutions embrace the cloud quickly to drive tangible results.
Deep integration
The need to respond quickly to COVID-19 has helped everyone in the sector to realise that digital transformation can happen anywhere, on any timeline.
It doesn’t have to be at the nation-state scale. Local government is equally well suited to capitalising on the benefits of cloud-enabled analytics. Cities don’t have the expertise internally to deploy these tools, so customers are not being asked to invest in huge data centres and spend their precious budget on data capture and data storage.
That service offering is built on the deep integration of the Viya platform with Azure services such as including Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS), the tech giant’s Active Directory, Azure Synapse, enabling the delivery of a fully integrated, end-to-end, cloud-native analytics solution.
Keeping the end in mind
It’s important to remember the ultimate beneficiary of all this technology is — the citizen. Cloud-enabled analytics must be employed in such a way that dealing with government agencies becomes easier and more streamlined. Citizens are expecting a level of performance that they experience in the consumer world, and that performance can now be achieved faster and at a lower cost thanks to partnerships like that between the two software firms.
Governments have an enormous responsibility to keep citizens safer, to reduce unnecessary spending, and frankly, to make daily life more enjoyable. The analytics software developer takes this responsibility seriously and is working on the next generation of analytics technology that will help the public sector reap the benefits of the cloud, and improve the citizen experience.
Governments all over the world have been under a lot of pressure as the custodians of citizen’s physical and mental wellbeing. In this process, they have generated massive amounts of personal data that must be managed and analysed effectively and securely to derive useful insights. These derivatives will give direction to perpetual governments measures to support their citizens through these tough times.
In order to help governments build data resiliency and be future-ready institutions, OpenGov Asia organised an OpenGov Live! Virtual Breakfast Insight with delegates from various Singapore government agencies on 5 November 2020.
The relevance and timeliness of the topic at hand saw the virtual session witness a full house of delegates who were eager to know more.
Making data available is important but keeping it secure is of paramount importance
The session was opened by Mohit Sagar, Group Managing Director and Editor-in-Chief at OpenGov Asia.
Mohit shared that placing trust in the huge volumes of data generated by governments is the biggest challenge in the public sector today. Governments need to decide if they are going to trust the data as a single source of truth or not.
He further went on to share the 5 major considerations that must be taken into account in order to make this decision. They include security, compliance and governance, cost management, automation and orchestration, and performance monitoring.
Mohit emphasised that while making data available and agile is very important for agencies today, ensuring the security of data is of paramount importance. He strongly urged then to effectively manage their data, leveraging cloud technology, so that it becomes an asset to them.
He complimented the delegates for being associated with a government that is always willing to push the boundaries and assured them that they would find this session a great opportunity to learn about what Veeam has to offer.
Mohit concluded his presentation by advocating pushing the envelope even further with the right partners who could help accelerate the process.
Democratic work tools make organisational policies and people’s behaviour critical in an organization
After Mohit’s presentation, Mike Cunnington, Deputy Commissioner, Information and Intelligence Services, Inland Revenue, New Zealand shared his insights with the delegates.
Mike began his presentation by sharing with delegates the transformation journey that Inland Revenue team has been undergoing for the past 6 years and is now close to its destination. He shared that this transformation journey is unique as it brings together people, process, platform and policy together which is very rare.
Mike was happy to share that his organisation was working towards achieving digital transformation that focused on enabling a connected knowledge ecosystem tying together data, analysis, information and knowledge. This process took gathered an incredibly fast pace after the pandemic hit.
This rapid digital transformation became their lifeline to survive and operate during the recent testing times. It helped staff collaborate internally and with other governments effectively while operating remotely. It also helped them ensure the financial well-being of small enterprises and the people associated with them.
Mike opined that institutional policies and people-behaviour become a lot more critical as the democratising technology tools come into play. He also shared with the audience that their evolved data capabilities enable them to better understand and support their customers and the wider New Zealand public sector in the following ways:
- Analysing economic performance
- Assurance of wage custody
- Early fraud detection
- Automatic assessment of tax returns
Mike concluded his presentation by sharing that his organisation will continue to strengthen their information ecosystem and work towards making it more accessible; complemented by the required support and training to the people at IR New Zealand.
Availability, agility, and security are the three foundations of data resilience
After an enriching presentation by Mike, Casa Goh, Singapore Country Manager for Veeam Software shared his thoughts from a Veeam optic.
Casa began his address with a very interesting survey that better depicted the urgency of the situation – currently, there is a cyber-attack every 11 seconds and the industry most vulnerable is the public sector. Thus, governments must ask themselves: are they prepared to operate in such an environment?
He then laid out the three foundations of data resiliency: availability, agility, and security. He confirmed that every Veeam solution is built taking these three pillars into account. Casa went on to discuss each foundation in detail to ensure a complete clarity for the delegates.
Casa validated Veeam’s excellence in the field by sharing a customer success story where their solution helped the customer overcome the challenges and benefit from them.
He concluded his presentation by sharing with the delegates how Veeam’s cloud data management solution empowers organisational data by enabling unparalleled data availability, mobility, automation, and governance across data centres.
After the powerful presentations from the speakers, it was time for the interactive polling session.
On the first question about their organisation’s expectations on recovery time and recovery points in case of a cyberattack, disruption, corruption, or disaster almost half the audience voted that they want to get back in less than 1 hour without any loss of transaction or data (47%)
To this, a Chief Technology Officer reflected that everything in business comes with a cost. Therefore, organisations must prioritise their data into various categories and then decide on the strategy to keep it safe and secure. Based on how critical the data is, the expectations will change.
On the next question about an organisation’s confidence to recover within SLA after an outage, incident, or ransomware attack, a majority of the audience voted that they are fairly confident (66%).
A senior delegate from another agency in Singapore shared that his organisation does a lot of disaster recovery exercises and practices and thus, feel fairly confident to recover from an outage or an incident.
On the final question on concern about vendor/cloud/platform lock-in i.e. portability of workload/data across platform/ cloud, a major portion of the audience voted that they are somewhat concerned (52%).
A Deputy Director Digital Transformation and Innovation from a major technology agency shared that setting up a multi-cloud system is very complicated and from data portability viewpoint the only thing that organisations control is to store all the data with open access and within an open architecture which enables the ease of portability.
After an interactive round of discussion, Casa Goh from Veeam concluded the session with closing remarks. He thanked all the delegates and speakers for their contribution to the session. He also encouraged the delegates to reach out to the Veeam team to know more about their solutions and how it can help them.
South Korea’s largest telecommunications company plans to enter the Thai data centre market by building a hyperscale facility with a Thailand-based telecommunication services company. The facility will be built by both the two telecoms’ subsidiary Jasmine Telecom Systems (JTS). When built, the data centre will be rolled into a new Internet Data Center (IDC) business.
The Head of the Korean telecom noted that the IDC business partnership with the Thai firm is a great opportunity to prove its business capability in the global market. The telecom’s team is ready to expand its outreach to global markets through this endeavour in Southeast Asia, which is a newly emerging IDC market.
In March this year, the Korean signed a $19 million contract with the Thai group’s other affiliate, 3BB TV Co, to provide commercial IPTV (Internet Protocol TV) services in Thailand. The President and Director of the Thai firm stated that the hyperscale data centre and cloud service business will be a foundation to add value to the Group’s network business. Through the joint development of the IDC business, the company looks forward to long-term cooperation with the Korean telecom giant.
The rise of data centres
Asia Pacific data centre and cloud providers are among the fastest-growing in the world, with cloud revenue far outstripping data centre revenue, a new study by specialists in data centre research reportedly notes.
In particular, forecasts by the firm pegged cloud revenue in the region at four times more than data centre revenue over the four years to the beginning of 2025, with cloud revenue projected to increase by 87 percent and data centre revenue by 22 percent.
Fast growth
The new report looked at the market landscape for data centres and cloud services in the region, namely Southeast Asia countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam, as well as Australia, China (and Hong Kong), Japan South Korea, and Taiwan.
According to the report, there is one sq m of data centre space for every 522 people in the Asia Pacific region, with hubs such as Australia, Hong Kong, and Singapore having a notably higher data centre floor space “per head” than the rest of Asia.
China has the largest data centre space in the APAC (and second-largest globally), accounting for 43 percent of data centre space in the region with 1.7 million sq m of space forecast for 2021. Elsewhere, the next largest data centre market in APAC is Australia and Japan with 11 percent each, with Singapore in fourth place with 10 percent. Singapore is understood to be under a moratorium on new data centres that could last until 2021, though it is unclear if it is still in effect.
Smaller data centre markets are poised for further growth – with South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam forecast to have the highest increase.
An American multinational developer of analytics software has committed to up-skill a minimum of 500 students in analytics across Malaysia by the end of 2020, in response to increased demand for data science expertise. Under the banner of the firm’s Software Certified Young Professionals (SCYP), the program will collaborate with the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) to help drive the adoption of emerging technologies across the country.
Central to such efforts will be enabling students to work towards the certification in programming, machine learning and visual analytics through e-learning courses, supported by access to online communities and webinars.
The Managing Director of Malaysia at the firm stated that the company has a deep-rooted history in academia. Launching a program to empower Malaysian students with the firm’s analytics knowledge and expertise helps in answering the rising demand for technology professionals in Southeast Asia.
Business organisations need people who can make sense of data, manage and analyse it, build models and determine what information delivers the most value. Students with an analytical skillset will be highly sought after.
Once students have completed the e-learning courses and attended the associated webinars, a certification exam will follow before connections with SAS customers seeking young data science professionals.
Within Southeast Asia, “free or heavily subsidised” online courses are available to undergraduate, postgraduate and PhD students who are enrolled at a university, business school or university college in Malaysia, Indonesia or Vietnam. There are currently three courses available for students in Malaysia and Vietnam, and five courses on offer in Indonesia, spanning data analytics, statistics, machine learning and virtualisation.
The CEO of MDEC stated that the agency’s strategic partnership with the software company aligns perfectly with its commitment to ensuring delivery of technology relevant programmes to Malaysian students and help Malaysians make the digital leap into the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
The agency sees its public-private partnership initiatives such as the tech firm contributing to Malaysia’s overall growth of the data science skills required in the workforce to support the digitally-driven economy, which is also critical to meet the demand of the current and future job market.
Growing demand for tech professionals
OpenGov Asia earlier reported that Malaysians with niche skills in technology have far brighter prospects in 2020 as many sectors are hiring in their push forward with digitalisation. A Malaysia-based consultancy’s 2020 salary survey revealed that job opportunities and higher pay were expected for those in mid to high-level management positions in eight sectors.
Talents with niche skills who are changing jobs, on the other hand, are looking at an increment of up to 30 per cent due to demand outstripping supply, the firm’s Country Manager for Malaysia said in a statement accompanying the survey report.
The survey also encouraged as employers may be more open to hiring job seekers with the necessary tech skills but who may have less industry experience.
Moreover, as Malaysia invests more into its technological infrastructure, the more it will see tech talent flooding into the nation, thereby growing its digital economy and pushing forward its Industry 4.0 goals.
The Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) and the Cuban Ministry for Communications held an online training course: “Designing and developing big data systems” for Cuba. It was officially opened at Hanoi and La Habana. The training course took place within a week with the coordination of the Embassy of Cuba in Vietnam and two of Vietnam’s leading ICT groups: VNPT and Viettel.
According to a press release, the objective of the course was to provide advanced knowledge about big data such as analysing, designing, and developing big data systems for IT application and e-government development in regulatory agencies.
The course will aid Cuba to solve challenges and tools for big data as well as related content. It attracted nearly 50 attendants from Cuba’s Ministry of Communications, ministries, sectors, corporations, and ICT enterprises.
Topics conveyed by Vietnamese lecturers and experts from the Authority of Information Technology Application (MIC), VNPT, and Viettel included: general knowledge about big data; big data processing; the storage and handling of big data; infrastructure requirements; how to manage big data using IPv6; analysis and presentation tools, models, methods and techniques math for analysing and integrating big data, etc.
The event is one of the activities in a series of activities celebrating the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Vietnam and Cuba and the Vietnam – Latin America Relationship Development Plan in 2020.
In the framework of cooperation between the two ministries, in July 2019, MIC coordinated with VNPT, Viettel, and Bkav to organise training courses on cybersecurity in Havana for Cuba. Furthermore, to promote the specialised ICT cooperation between the two, MIC undertook several activities like participating in the La Havana international book fair in Cuba, publishing two books in Spanish and copyright granting activities, exchanging radio and television programs, and promoting images and the relationship between the two countries.
In the coming time, MIC will host an investment promotion conference in the field of ICT with Latin American countries in October and continue to host a 01 information security training course for Cuba, scheduled for November.
Vietnam has also been providing support to Laos’ digital transformation. As OpenGov Asia earlier reported, thanks to a program under Viettel, all citizenship data has been uploaded to the system, improving the capacity to manage data and information about people, and helping reduce administrative procedures. This is the first time that Laos has implemented the management of electronic civil status instead of the registration of civil status as before.
The unit in Laos was the first licensed by the Central Bank of Laos to officially deploy mobile money and is also the only company developing this service in the country, offering a new secure and quick payment method for more than six million people. This field is expected to generate 30-50% of Unitel’s telecoms revenue in the future. Founded in October 2009, the Viettel subsidiary operates across all 17 provinces and cities in Laos and has led the market for eight consecutive years. It is also the Laos government’s partner in implementing the country’s key e-government systems.
With increased demand and far wider usage, the pandemic has significantly impacted the financial sector in a multitude of ways. With stay-at-home advisories and lockdowns in place, reliance on online banking and digital commerce shot up astronomically. And the industry had to keep pace with this transactional mushrooming to stay intact, relevant and to meet the consumer requirement.
The latest OpenGovLive! Virtual Breakfast Insight on 18 September 2020 explored how the financial sector industry in the Philippines is coping with the new normal and how it can better equip itself to last the long haul.
The packed OpenGov Asia virtual hub was a testament to the relevance and timeliness of the session. Senior digital executives from across the sector joined in to discuss and explore what has been done and what can be done in the field.
Data compliance for financial organisations as essential as ensuring the flow of money in the economy
The event opened with a welcome address from Mohit Sagar, Group Managing Director, and Editor-in-Chief, OpenGov Asia and a quick round of introductions.
Mohit set the ball rolling by sharing how the pandemic has created a lot of chaos in the financial sector industry forcing the leaders to make the digital transformation as much a priority as ensuring the continued availability money in the system.
Data intelligence and governance are key issues for financial industries in the post-COVID-19 era. Data strategy – whether to have an integrated approach or a siloed outlook – is dependent on each organisation’s culture and it’s thinking on how to survive in the current environment.
At the same time, of paramount importance in the GDPR era is for organisations to make sure their data strategy is compliant to industry and privacy regulations.
Since data compliance is of such significance, Mohit concluded by advising delegates to partner with champions in the field rather than trying to do everything in-house.
Drivers and pillars of data governance in organisations
After Mohit set the tone for the discussion, Sachin Tonk, Director, Data and Privacy Operations, Standard Chartered Bank shared his insights.
Sachin began by charting the journey of data governance and where it sits today. Data evolution is very challenging as, not only, is it complicated and complex, but the rate of change is also very fast.
He went on to address the question of why we need data governance in the first instance. The rationale sits in two main categories:
- Internal demand that includes in-depth analysis, agility for growth and real-time operations.
- External demand that comprises new data products, GDPR, MIFID ll and M&A.
All the factors under these two umbrellas make data governance both tedious and, often, convoluted.
Sachin opined that data governance and privacy is going to be the biggest priority for organisations in the coming year. He expounded on the major pillars of data protection policy in any organisation.
The first being robust governance framework, policies and processes. This must be complemented by the second pillar I.e. proper awareness and training to create a culture with compliance in its DNA. He also added that security and IT technology come are the glue binding all components together.
Continuing in the same vein, Sachin spoke about the various essential actors involved in the governance process. Data owners, data stewards and monitors have to come together and collaborate to get the right spirit of data governance.
He then shared that the key to having a robust data governance policy is creating a catalogue of questions related to the actors. When formulating the ideal governance policy, he advised teams to go for small wins rather than opt for prototyping and then scaling up across the organisation.
In closing, Sachin noted that data governance was not a one-time activity. He emphasised the importance of monitoring progress and measuring the success of the governance policy and constantly working to improve it.
Data governance is becoming increasingly challenging and complicated for organisations
After Sachin’s informative presentation, Varghese Mathew, Business Director, Hitachi Vantara, Philippines, spoke to the topic at hand.
Varghese began by sharing some interesting statistics s about the challenges faced by organisations in the data governance domain.
Almost 74% of organisations have difficulty in evaluating quality and reliability of data, 61% have too many data sources and almost 90% need an intelligent data governance strategy.
Varghese further explained the need for organisations to have data governance in place in the current digital era.
The sheer volume of data makes its governance enormously complex, inevitably driving organisations to go tech in order to manage data more efficiently.
Other drivers include technological silos and regulations like GDPR, MIFID etc. Moreover, increasingly, countries are formulating their own regulations around data protection, making it tough for organisations to survive amid the complexity. Companies that are not compliant across the board pay a heavy price.
Varghese explained that the objectives of having a data governance policy are to manage the huge volumes of structured and unstructured data, the data being kept in silos within organisations, multiple business goals and the rapid speed and demand for compliance.
He then went on to share the Hitachi Vantara approach. The goal is to help businesses deal with different types of data silos and to make sure it is visible and governed well and on an intelligent platform where it can be analysed.
Their solutions help organisations ensure every bit of their data is available, insightful and actionable – making it easier to govern.
Varghese also explained how the Hitachi Vantara solution can help organisations make better sense of their data. It can help organisations save time and resources by not indulging in unnecessary data forensics, regulator reporting, etc.
He underscored this by sharing a case study where Hitachi Vantara helped a customer organise and make sense of their data. He shared how Hitachi helped Rabobank reduce time to discovery of data for governance and regulatory reporting by automating communication monitoring.
After Varghese’s presentation, it was time for polling questions and to involve the delegates in an interactive discussion.
On the first question regarding the current primary reason for data governance projects, a majority of the audience voted for compliance and regulatory requirements (46%).
A senior delegate from a major Philippines bank shared that she voted for compliance and regulatory requirements because once this is done, a better quality of information, data security and privacy will obviously follow.
On the next question about a centralised data compliance strategy, delegates were divided between, data being stored and managed centrally (56%) and some data being centralised while some are managed by specific department/country/ business (44%).
Another delegate shared that they voted for option one as their data is managed centrally and integrated in one place. Governance, data quality and analysis are done in one place for the consumption of management and operations.
On the final question about rating your organisation’s biggest concern in meeting GDPR requirements, a major chunk of the delegates voted for data protection: needing clearer details on how data is processed and secured with timely notification if data is compromised (57%).
A delegate reflected that data protection is the biggest priority of their organisation currently; with employees working from home, the data is more vulnerable to disruptions than ever before. Thus, it is very important to ensure that the data we are working on is fully secure and protected.
After the engaging discussions and deliberations, the session came to an end with closing remarks by Verghese Mattew.
He thanked all the delegates for taking their time and participation in the Virtual Breakfast Insight. He concurred that their ideas and reflections were in-line with the trends in the global space where Hitachi is operating. He also echoed their sentiments regarding the struggle faced by organisations to make their data accessible as well as keeping it safe and protected from a compliance point of view.
In closing, Varghese assured the delegates that Hitachi Vantara solutions were available to assist them in the same way as they have done for numerous organisations thus far.
OpenGovLive! Virtual Breakfast Insight
In collaboration with Hitachi Vantara: Using DataOps to deliver big value from big data