Breaking Down Information Silos Across the DoD
Today’s warfighter needs and expects the latest information in order to complete their mission. But providing real-time access across the DoD Information Enterprise, particularly in tactical environments, has been a challenge for the following reasons:
- Across the DoD, and even within the same command, there are a wide variety of departmental knowledge bases and portals. Each of these databases and portals feature different sources and types of data including intranets, email systems, file shares, wikis, and more. With information in so many different places, locating it can be time-consuming and difficult. In fact, a study conducted by MeriTalk, DLT Solutions, and Google found that 87% of federal employees spend about one and a half hours each day searching internal databases for information.
- Because information is not easily searchable, departments and commands can find themselves re-creating or requesting the same data multiple times.
- Tactical or “edge” computing environments often have limited bandwidth, making it difficult to quickly and accurately disseminate knowledge to users in the field.
- Current search functions require unstructured and static data to be altered in order for it to be searchable, and do not offer the ability to draw natural associations across data sources.
New Approach: Leveling the “Data Field” with the Google Search Appliance
The Google Search Appliance (GSA) offers the DoD a way to break down information sharing barriers and give warfighters real-time access to the information they need to make confident decisions – in the office and in the field. A scalable, easy-to-install hardware solution, the appliance democratizes content and information and provides consistently fast access to relevant structured or unstructured information.
The results help departments and commands take advantage of all of their data through effective use of metadata and the ability to push and pull data via auto updates or via searches respectively. Plus, it makes it faster and easier to find the right data at the right time, ultimately increasing its value and relevance.
With the Google Search Appliance, today’s warfighter can quickly and effectively harness the value of mission critical knowledge – no matter where it is stored or when it was placed there. Mission teams can rapidly search all enterprise content available at their security classification with just one search bar. Advanced features such as dynamic navigation and entity recognition and identification ensure that mission operators are able to continuously improve the speed, accuracy, and completeness of their knowledge searches – even across legacy systems.
Interested in learning more? View our on-demand webcast Empowering Today’s Warfighter with Increased Access to Mission-Critical Knowledge or check out the additional resources below:
- Webcast: Discover Better Workflow with Comprehensive Search
- Case Study: Air Force Medical Operations Agency
- eBook: Google Information Sharing for Dummies
Image courtesy of Flickr.
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