The Government & Education Data Cloud empowers the public sector with a cross-cloud data platform to deliver a holistic view of citizens, recipients, and students; share and collaborate with data intra- and cross-agency; and eliminate fraud, waste, and abuse
Snowflake, the Data Cloud company, announced the launch of the Government & Education Data Cloud, which unites Snowflake’s data platform, Snowflake- and partner-delivered solutions, and industry-specific datasets. The Government & Education Data Cloud empowers educational institutions and public sector agencies at the federal, state, and local levels with a single, integrated, and cross-cloud data platform that enhances mission outcomes and enables public sector organizations to spend more time on what matters most: caring for citizens and students.
“Unlocking the full value of data across Montana’s various agencies has been key in enabling us to improve the citizen experience”
To help federal, state and local agencies meet security and compliance standards, Snowflake’s platform has achieved FedRAMP® Moderate and StateRAMP High, as well as support for regulated workloads subject to International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS), Internal Revenue Service (IRS) 1075, and Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) and Defense FAR Supplement (DFARS) safeguarding requirements across certain of its U.S. government-designated regions. Snowflake is also “In Process” for FedRAMP High in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) GovCloud (US West) Region. The Snowflake platform also supports Family Education and Privacy Act (FERPA) workloads across its U.S. regions. These cumulative achievements and ongoing efforts solidify Snowflake’s status as a trusted data platform used by governments throughout the United States to securely guard sensitive data against potential threats.
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Today, government agencies deal with disparate and siloed data that can impact real-time decision making. Securely exchanging information and collaborating with data remains a key focus area and a fundamental challenge for the majority of government agencies. As a result, many agencies share data ad hoc and must physically move their data, which can increase risk of exposure. Similarly, educational institutions frequently struggle to unify institutional data, including institutional research, student retention, human resources, finance, and student services data, as they manage data demands with their limited IT resources. In short, organizations across government and education frequently struggle to fully leverage the wealth of data their organizations possess to improve citizen and student outcomes. These challenges come at a time when the White House is encouraging digital transformation efforts and more data sharing between the public and private sectors.
The Snowflake Government & Education Data Cloud makes it possible for government and education institutions to address these industry challenges by:
- Enabling intra- and cross-agency data sharing and collaboration: The Snowflake Government & Education Data Cloud offers a single, integrated, and cross-cloud data platform that eliminates technical and institutional data silos and ensures high levels of data security and governance with FedRAMP, DoD, and StateRAMP compliance, as well as support for regulated customer workloads, to enable public sector organizations and educational institutions to securely share data across teams, between agencies, and externally with the public or the private sector.
- Establishing 360-degree views of their stakeholders: Governments and education institutions can combine data sources to create holistic 360-degree entity, citizen, recipient, and student views to understand and improve the efficacy their services have on recipients and students.
- Monitoring for fraud, waste, and abuse: Snowflake enables public sector organizations to solve mission-critical challenges that help them detect and prevent fraud sooner by addressing their technology and data limitations.
- Leveraging industry-leading network of public sector partners: Take advantage of a rich partner ecosystem and their industry-specific, prebuilt templates to build valuable solutions faster.
With the launch of the Government & Education Data Cloud, government customers will soon enjoy the same benefits of sharing data as the private sector: exchange data within government agencies, access listings from Snowflake Marketplace providers, and privately share data with other accounts.
With today’s Data Sharing for Government Private Preview launch, we are taking sign ups from government customers. Data sharing for government customers is expected to be generally available later this summer.
“The Snowflake Government & Education Data Cloud will help government agencies and educational institutions accelerate their modernization efforts by making data more readily available on a cross-cloud data platform that meets the highest levels of data security and governance,” said Jeff Frazier, Global Head of Public Sector at Snowflake. “With Snowflake, organizations have the data they need to drive meaningful change in their communities, including coordinating hurricane relief efforts, intervening when a student is at risk for falling behind, and improving community or patient health across public health systems.”
Government & Education Data Cloud Partner Solutions
Within the Government & Education Data Cloud, customers can access industry-specific solutions to leverage best practices, reduce time-to-value, and increase overall impact.
- Applications Powered by Snowflake, like the ones developed by PowerSchool and Merit, allow educational institutions and the public sector to deliver equitable opportunities for students, maximize education attainment and workforce participation, and empower state government organizations to respond quickly in times of crisis.
- Snowflake Marketplace partners, like Carto and Vantage Point Consulting enable live access to a variety of data sources leveraging Snowflake’s privacy-preserving collaboration technology, to synchronize spatial data for the public sector and help higher education institutions track post-graduation success.
- Consulting and professional services companies like Booz Allen Hamilton, Deloitte, and Plante Moran can reduce time-to-value for customers with pre-built partner solutions that help solve for top priority use cases, including enabling decision dominance for federal customers, modernizing applications for optimal mission outcomes, and providing care for people experiencing homelessness through a comprehensive data strategy.
- Technology leaders like AWS, Collibra, and Immuta provide integrations and out-of-the-box solutions so customers can attain deeper insights and realize the full power and ease of use of the Government & Education Data Cloud.
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Some of the most innovative public sector agencies, schools, and universities are already using Snowflake’s Government & Education Data Cloud.
Customer use cases include:
- State of Montana: Leverages Snowflake to democratize data across state agencies, and ensure the right level of access and security for stakeholders who need it for data-informed decision-making, including analyzing the time it takes to approve permits or to share data between the departments of labor and commerce to understand how Montana’s workforce is changing.
- New York University: The school wanted to collect and analyze information about students and their interactions with course content and assignments, but its learning management system (LMS) didn’t have the ability to deliver simple analytics at scale for users. With the Snowflake Data Cloud and AWS, New York University leverages modern data sharing and analytics to boost student success. By consolidating data on the Data Cloud, the school was able to collect and share data and reports quickly in the most user-friendly way for the faculty to access.
- City of Tacoma: The Washington state municipality has 21 distinct departments and offices, including public safety, power, water, and environmental services, and needed a way to increase transparency with citizens and better run programs. With Snowflake’s Data Cloud, the City of Tacoma is able to effectively leverage data to publish monthly updates on the budget or identify citizens who might be experiencing hardship and qualify for utility relief programs.
Additional comments on the news
- “Unlocking the full value of data across Montana’s various agencies has been key in enabling us to improve the citizen experience,” said Adam Carpenter, Chief Data Officer, State of Montana. “Snowflake has been one of the key pieces in enabling us to centralize our data in the cloud, establish proper governance around sensitive data, and tackle key projects, such as economic development, to benefit all Montanans.”
- “Snowflake’s Government & Education Data Cloud has enabled New York University to centralize our data across various Learning Management Systems into a predominantly self-service data platform,” said Satya Kunta, Chief Data Architect & Senior Director at New York University. “With Snowflake, we have seamlessly transitioned to utilizing real-time data, enabling simplified access to student engagement metrics for efficient identification of necessary student interventions.”
- “Snowflake has enabled the City of Tacoma to embark on a fundamental, enterprise-wide shift in how our departments access data, enabling us to move beyond data preparation and instead focus on using data to power programs around financial transparency and hardship relief programs that benefit our citizens,” said Grace Brosnon, Chief Technology Officer, City of Tacoma.
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