Whether it is field operations or emergency response teams being deployed to a natural
disaster, having ready access to wide and dynamic cross-sections of data from numerous
sources is at the heart of daily decision-making among the public sector. Leveraging
established and increasingly wide-spread open development standards, mashups provide a
platform that allows government workers and agencies to find, use, and combine the data they need at a moment’s notice in response to the every day needs, threats, and crises that they are entrusted to manage.

Enterprise mashup tools provide a foundation for collaboration that has been previously
untapped across organizations, departments, and non-governmental sources. Additionally, the ability to manage the public sector’s unique security requirements is essential, particularly when dealing with highly sensitive intelligence data. There have been significant advances in mashup tools that address the most complex requirements of the modern enterprise, government agencies and GSOs.

Mashup Tools Are Now Ready for Government Use
Government agencies are the source of tremendous volumes of publicly available data –
whether it’s from the National Weather Service, NASA, the Labor Department, or the Federal Aviation Authority. And the data these agencies are making available for consumption is increasingly adhering to open standards. As such, the time is ripe for the public sector to start implementing tools that facilitate agencies in getting the most value out of the information they have at their disposal.
Instead of putting the onus on agency IT departments to develop custom applications, the past few years of open standards development have created the potential to leverage existing data sources for an enterprise mashup solution. Providing this type of framework gives users the ability to decide and access what they need directly, instead of continuing to rely on slow and expensive custom application development.
Enabling self-service capacities for users has immense value for IT departments, which can
now feed data into a mashup solution and begin to reduce the cost, improve ROI, and speed time to market of its development lifecycle. Providing faster value to stakeholders not only reduces cost, but also frees up technical resources to focus on other IT functions, such as data standardization, management, and security.