DOE Breaks Down Data Silos With Enterprise Data Platform

The Energy Department is dismantling data silos across its 90 program offices and sites through Quanta, an enterprise data platform aimed at eliminating duplicative IT investments and enabling real-time information sharing across legacy systems.

Quanta is a data lakehouse, a modern data architecture that combines the low-cost, flexible storage of a data lake with the governance, management and performance capabilities of a data warehouse. The platform enables DOE to centrally manage and audit shared enterprise data, supporting users ranging from analysts running reports to CISOs monitoring cyber threats. Through an open-source approach, Quanta enables live data sharing without replicating datasets, replacing manual, spreadsheet-based processes.

DOE launched the platform in August to establish a standardized, modular and interconnected data infrastructure without straining agency resources. CISOs across DOE worked together to identify available funding to incrementally build the platform, the agency’s Deputy CIO for Architecture, Engineering, Technology and Innovation Bridget Carper said last week at the Databricks Data and AI Summit in Washington, D.C.

“We had to agree across internal management that we were going to proceed with our plan,” said Carper. “We started with our cyber data … and we took a small step so we can start getting momentum.”

Enabling Energy’s Cloud Migration

The modular strategy also guided DOE’s adoption of commercial cloud capabilities, allowing the agency to pull data from legacy systems into Quanta without requiring large-scale infrastructure replacements.

“We unfortunately still operate in some of those legacy systems, but we are pulling that data into Quanta today,” Carper said.

The platform has already helped DOE migrate critical data to the cloud within 72 hours to meet deadlines outlined in an April 2025 executive order, according to Carper. The order tasked DOE with developing a standard methodology for analyzing current and predicting future energy reserve margins regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to meet peak demands by May 8, 2025.

“We were able to leverage our native tools and the catalog of features to identify what data we needed and where it was,” Carper said during the event.

Carper highlighted an ambitious timeline for full integration. Within the next two years, all 90 DOE components should have their data flowing through Quanta to respond to inquiries without disrupting mission operations, she said.

“As long as your authority to operate covers it, there are no boundaries,” said Carper.