Insight by TD Synnex Public Sector
AI & Data Exchange 2025: TD Synnex Public Sector’s Trey Bostick on ensuring secure data flow to support AI expansion
As agencies expand use cases, scaling AI and reaping benefits will hinge on evolving federal data infrastructure, TD Synnex Public Sector expert explains.
As agencies continue to proliferate use of artificial intelligence, the need for efficient and secure data flow will become increasingly critical.
In data management speak, agencies will need to address “pipe choking,” said Trey Bostick, senior director, FAST Program, at TD Synnex Public Sector.
And AI is taking hold. AI use cases more than doubled across the federal government in 2024. The leading categories last year included internal agency support, healthcare services, and government benefits and service delivery.
To continue to expand and scale their AI operations, agencies will want to build out their infrastructures to allow data to flow securely without interruptions, Bostick said during Federal News Network’s AI and Data Exchange.
AI to-do: Overcome data sharing challenges
The challenge is that agencies often work in silos, making data exchange difficult — sometimes even within organizations, he noted.
“One of the other things that’s really critical is … the ability for agencies to migrate or bring data across the agency walls. Our government folks are making great strides there, but there’s still a lot of siloing or firewalling,” Bostick said.
Consider the military, he said, where multiple organizations and services might need to collaborate easily.
“For example, you’ve got warfighters in combat. The flow of data and the quickness that they get it — and the ability to make proper decisions based off of real-time data flowing — that’s all built and based off of infrastructure and all the things that sit on top of it. It’s really important to get that going.”
AI benefits: Supply chain, enterprise IT improvements
One area where Bostick expects AI to help agencies is supply chain management. On average, supply chain disruptions cost agencies about $54 million annually in losses per agency.
With AI, however, supply chain management will continue to become more resilient, enabling agencies to predict disruptions, optimize logistics and improve overall decision-making, he said.
Agencies are starting to use AI to make sure they “don’t have fictitious manufacturer items coming in. People are very sophisticated on the bad-actor side. They can make things look very real coming in the door. AI is a good way to stay on top of that,” Bostick said.
AI also can help government agencies keep an eye on the IT enterprise too. “There’s such a tremendous amount of data that gets consumed and then re-consumed and put back out,” Bostick said. “The storage of that data — how do you keep that in a place that’s safe and secure and allow government people to get to it in a fashion that they need to? This all continues to grow.”
Regulatory mandates, including the Defense Department’s Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification program, the National Institute of Standards and Technology cyber guidance and FedRAMP authorization are helping bolster security, ensure compliance and mitigate risks across agencies’ systems, he said.
“There’s a lot of regulation going on as far as that goes. And the government really is doing the right things. They’re on the right path. It’s just the acceleration of the pace is really the critical item — how they get there quickly.”
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