Jane Edwards
Barry Duplantis, vice president and general manager of the North American public sector at Mattermost, said government agencies looking to curb the use of shadow IT by employees should consider deploying a self-hosted, open-source collaboration platform.
With shadow IT, employees can use applications, devices and services beyond the control of an organization’s information technology environment, according to Duplantis.
In an opinion piece published Tuesday on Federal Times, Duplantis wrote that such a platform could enable government employees to share data, communicate and collaborate while ensuring data security.
He said a collaboration platform that could be fielded in a cloud environment or on-premises offers a single location that could facilitate secure messaging and data sharing.
“For federal agencies and organizations that require strong security, a better approach is a collaboration platform that can be deployed on-premises in their own data center,” Duplantis stated.
“A self-hosted platform gives the agency total control over communication and content shared within the platform, with complete ownership of the data. Such digital sovereignty is an imperative for government organizations that need to protect the privacy of employees whose data they manage,” he added.
