The below blog was written by and published with permission by Steve O’Keeffe. Steve O'Keeffe is the founder of MeriTalk – www.meritalk.com – the government IT network. MeriTalk is an online community that hosts professional networking, thought leadership, and focused events to drive the government IT dialogue. A 20-year veteran of the government IT community, O'Keeffe has worked in government and industry. In addition to MeriTalk, he founded Telework Exchange, GovMark Council, and O’Keeffe & Company It seems amnesia is in fashion in D.C. OMB's data center consolidation admission that it stumbled across an additional 1,000 data centers was greeted by more smirks than surprise. Now that gives a whole new meaning to "government oversight." But, it seems that server farms aren't the only thing the Federal government's mislaying. According to a new MeriTalk study, "Uncle Sam's Lost & Found - $15.4B," Federal agencies are challenged to lay hand on information in their own databases and servers.

Can the government really save $15B by improving the way they search for documents? A recent survey of 300 federal employees, Uncle Sam's Lost and Found: $15.4 Billion, indicates that improvements can be made in several areas. The best place to start is with training, standards and the enforcement of standards. Sure, most agencies have established naming conventions, file storage procedures and a host of other ‘best practices’, but how often are these standards reviewed to ensure compliance? Focusing on some of these fundamentals will certainly improve the efficiency of file search. Unfortunately, training and standards will not fully resolve the challenge. One survey participant expressed the desire to have the ability to search for documents at work the same way they search for data at home – via search tools like Google. The benefits of a search appliance deployed within an agency are many. The search appliances are able to be customized to fit the agency needs, the interface is familiar, and the technology is scalable. The amount of data stored by organizations grows exponentially year after year, so the problem is only going to increase. Is $15B in savings a realistic number? The data suggests that the savings is just the tip of iceberg.