The Covid-19 pandemic dramatically impacted the airline industry’s financial outlook — that came as no surprise, given the sudden shutdown of nearly all air travel. But it was airlines’ response to this shift that produced game-changing insights, revealing where the greatest business value lies in the era of Big Data.
To combat losses from the downturn, United Airlines secured a loan by mortgaging its MileagePlus loyalty program. It valued the program at $21.9 billion in June 2020 financial documentation, more than double the company’s market cap at the time. American Airlines similarly secured a loan, backed by its AAdvantage program. Jeff Frazier, global head of public sector at Snowflake, the Data Cloud company, kicked off a breakout session at the AWS Summit in Washington, D.C., by delving into the ramifications of these events.
BRIDGING THE
DATA GAP
Decrease the distance between
data gathering and data value.
United Airlines MileagePlus value:
American Airlines June 1,
2020, market cap:
Loyalty programs draw value from the massive amount of data they generate and leverage. This use of data-driven assets as collateral by companies that are not, at their core, technology companies highlights the growing importance of data as an asset for all organizations, including the
public sector.
The value of public sector data
“Data is the DNA of knowledge,” Frazier said. “Organizations will be defined — their value will be defined — by their data.” As industry leaders seek new ways to monetize and commoditize company data, governments grapple with their own responsibilities in leveraging data as a public good.
“The very act of collecting government data is unique. They have authorities that other people don't have, a lot of times they have legal components to back up that data collection,” said Winston Chang, Snowflake’s chief technology officer for public sector. Government data also spans a wide spectrum of industries, he added, and the longevity of its data collection would be difficult to match for even the oldest private companies.
Chang described an example of how a prospective business owner could use government data to choose a location for an ice cream shop: Create a map overlaid with census data about population density, a NOAA heat map to identify areas with ideal weather for ice cream consumption, and tax data to highlight Opportunity Zones. Just a simple example, he said, of the actionable insights that can be drawn from connecting three different government data sets.
"Data is the DNA of knowledge. Organizations will be defined — their value will be defined —
by their data."
- Jeff Frazier, Global Head of Public Sector, Snowflake
In this map of the D.C. area, overlaid with a NOAA heat map, the red dots represent existing ice cream shops and Opportunity Zones are outlined in purple.
“In this audience sit the most critical stewards of the most valuable public asset. Those of you who work on systems and own a data set, who support the ecosystem, you're all data stewards,” Chang said. “Your role has actually changed. It's not just protection anymore, it's also about the management and the maximization of that value as a public good.”
Challenges to leveraging government data
While the government churns out data on a daily basis — Data.gov, for example, stores hundreds of thousands of data sets — the difficulty lies in effectively connecting data sets. The siloed way in which government entities rely on disparate data formats, tools and governance strategies makes it difficult to bridge the gap between generating data and drawing value from data.
With these challenges in mind, Snowflake launched its Government & Education Data Cloud, enabling Snowflake partners to deliver custom-built analytics tools and industry data sets that apply to a diverse range of government and education use cases.
“Ultimately, the only way to extract the most value from data is through collaboration, through connecting to other pieces of data,” Chang said. “It’s only data that can truly empower the public sector and allow it
to evolve.”
Modern technologies and tools, like Snowflake’s platform, are making that process easier by flipping the script. Instead of having to build business models around existing tools and their capabilities and limitations, modern platforms have the flexibility to be molded to your ideal business model.
“This is an opportunity to rethink, how does your business work?” Chang said. “Reimagine what your
business can do.”
Real-life use case: The Commonwealth of Massachusetts
The challenge: “Standardizing platforms and having fewer ‘one of everything.’ It seems like we own one of every single software tool, deployed all over the place, and that makes it impossible to share and get value out of the data.”
- William Cole, CTO, Executive Office of Technology Services and Security, Commonwealth of Massachusetts
Data silos don’t just impact government technologists, they also create complications for citizens. When a resident of Massachusetts searches for specific information, they should be able to find it without having to dig through numerous disconnected departmental websites, said William Cole, chief technology officer in the commonwealth’s Executive Office of Technology Services and Security.
“Citizens shouldn’t have to know, ‘Oh, I need to go to environmental affairs to get a fishing license and understand where trout have been stocked in rivers,’” Cole said. “They should be able to leverage that easily accessible data that we can now publish out on the mass.gov website at their fingertips.”
To be good stewards of data, Cole said his team must be able to share, secure and provide data to citizens in real time. Fulfilling that mission depends on having a complete common operating picture of data across state agencies and departments. While Cole said the Snowflake platform “has made that so significantly easier, to collect the data, store the data, share the data, know what data you have and know where it is,” the human element is a significant hurdle.
Change is hard, and data stewards can feel protective of their organizations’ data. Many are hesitant to share their data with other state agencies, Cole said, even though they aren’t always able to articulate why. The key is starting small with departments that are already interested in new strategies.
“To get that organizational change to take hold, we've had to show successes,” Cole said. “Find somebody that is open to the idea of sharing data and collaboration across the Commonwealth, and then go and use them as your cheerleader.”
Fast-forward five years into the future, as that team of “cheerleaders” grows, and Cole said data access across departments in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts will no longer depend on tracking down and pulling data out of various incompatible locations and into Access databases and Excel spreadsheets.
“Having data in a centralized location, secured, where the right people can access it at the right time is going to be game-changing for the six-plus million people in the state,” Cole said. “I’m really excited about the future for this, and Snowflake empowering us to do this.”
Real-life use case: The U.S. Department of
Veterans Affairs (VA)
The challenge: “The VA is not just one centralized entity, it's actually a highly decentralized organization, and the challenge that we face in our data management journey always comes down to the culture.”
- Aaron Drew, Ph.D., Technical Director, Supply Chain Management Product Line, Department of Veterans Affairs
As a technical director at the VA, Dr. Aaron Drew devotes a lot of time and energy to optimizing technology toolsets, but often the hardest part is engaging the people who have to use those tools. Drew said an integration platform built on a Snowflake data lake will be a pipeline for all VA information systems, but getting there has not been a simple journey.
Drew entered into a highly decentralized organization in which data was simply stored where it was generated among hundreds of facilities. A key part of his job has been convincing the data stewards at those facilities of the importance of data transparency and collaboration across institutions.
Hundreds of VA facilities serve millions of veterans and their families in support of the agency’s stated mission “to care for those ‘who shall have borne the battle’ and for their families, caregivers and survivors.”
$21.9 billion
$8.27 billion
United Airlines June 1, 2020, market cap:
$31.5 billion
$4.76 billion
American Airlines
AAdvantage value:
1,297
1,113
300
145
171
155
56
Department of Veterans Affairs: VA Facilities Stats at a Glance
(as of 3/31/2022)
Number of VA Facilities
Total VA Care Sites
VA Outpatient Only Care Sites
VA Vet Centers
VA VACM with Acute Inpatient Care Sites
VA VACM with Outpatient Care Sites
VA National Cemetaries
Veterans Benefits Administration Regional Offices
Source: Department of Veterans Affairs, Veterans Health Administration, Office of the Assistant Deputy Under Secretary for Health for Policy and Planning
“First things first: the people. We needed to work on the culture before we could fully realize the VA's strategic plan,” Drew said, outlining the full journey. “It starts with the people: We change the culture, we get the buy in, we get the data. Then we standardize it, we curate it, we normalize it, we make it available. It becomes transparent, we leverage the platform and we deliver value.”
The VA employs nearly 400,000 people, which makes establishing any type of common platform or program extraordinarily complex. Drew said while Snowflake has made sharing data at the enterprise level and modernizing data operations possible, getting buy-in from key stakeholders is essential to success.
Drew closed his remarks by describing what he envisions for the future: “We’re using the Snowflake platform, and we’re now able to provide HHS real-time information from our entire inventory across all of our hospitals and our clinics and our regional readiness centers … Because Veterans Affairs, in 2023, stepped up, modernized and made the right partnership.”
As a technical director at the VA, Dr. Aaron Drew devotes a lot of time and energy to optimizing technology toolsets, but often the hardest part is engaging the people who have to use those tools. Drew said an integration platform built on a Snowflake data lake will be a pipeline for all VA information systems, but getting there has not been a simple journey.
Drew entered into a highly decentralized organization in which data was simply stored where it was generated among hundreds of facilities. A key part of his job has been convincing the data stewards at those facilities of the importance of data transparency and collaboration across institutions.
Hundreds of VA facilities serve millions of veterans and their families in support of the agency’s stated mission “to care for those ‘who shall have borne the battle’ and for their families, caregivers and survivors.”
Learn more about how Snowflake and its new Government & Education Data Cloud can help the public sector unleash the power of data.
