SAP test data management in the Public Sector has unique challenges, including stringent compliance, data sensitivity, and the need for cost-effective, realistic testing solutions. Across Public Sector organisations such as government, healthcare, and education, SAP systems manage finances, employees, services, and sensitive citizens’ data. In this blog, I explore this sector’s data in a bit more detail, and explain how DSM is the ideal solution for Public Sector data.
SUMMARY: SAP test data management in the Public Sector has unique challenges, including stringent compliance, data sensitivity, and the need for cost-effective, realistic testing solutions. Across Public Sector organisations such as government, healthcare, and education, SAP systems manage finances, employees, services, and sensitive citizens’ data. In this blog, Stephen McIvor explores this sector’s data in a bit more detail, and Dalene van Niekerk explains how Data Sync Manager (DSM) is the ideal solution.
As a Services Consultant at EPI-USE Labs, I tend to work with a broad variety of clients and industries. Last week, I worked on a project to refresh data for one of the UK’s local councils, and it made me think about how SAP test data management is different for the Public Sector. In this blog, I explore this sector’s data in a bit more detail.
What makes Public Sector organisations’ data different?
SAP’s ERP solution is known as one of the best in the world, and many organisations have SAP at the heart of their operations. Across government, healthcare, and education, SAP systems sit quietly at the centre doing a lot of heavy lifting. These systems manage finances, employees, services, and in many cases deeply sensitive citizens’ data. Over time, these systems grow, both in size and importance, until they become too complex to change easily, and too critical to fail.
Public Sector organisations often engage EPI-USE Labs to help them build a refresh strategy, since you need to be able to test and be sure of the changes you bring into these critical systems.
What’s the difference between Public Sector and Private Sector data?
I’ve drawn up some of the main differences in this summary table.
| Summary Table: Public Sector vs. Private Sector Data | ||
|---|---|---|
| Area | Public Sector SAP Data | Private Sector SAP Data |
| Primary goal | Accountability and Transparency | Profitability and Growth |
| Budgeting | Rigid, legal, fund-based | Flexible, goal-oriented |
| Data focus | Citizen records, services and funds | Customer/product (CRM) |
| Compliance | Laws / regulations (GDPR/BSI) | Regulatory / industry standard |
| Customisation | High (to fit specific laws) | Standardised (best practices) |
Challenges with Public Sector test data management
Typical scenario: SAP landscapes become too large to copy
Public Sector SAP Production systems are typically very large. Years of transactional data, legislative requirements for retention, and the scale of public services all contribute to databases that are difficult to move or replicate.
Yet non-production systems still need realistic data to function properly. Full client copies often take too long, consume too much infrastructure, and carry unnecessary risk. As a result, many teams either avoid refreshing test systems or rely on partial, outdated datasets. Neither option is ideal.
The hidden risk of testing with outdated data
Testing with stale data is one of the most common, and underestimated, risks in Public Sector SAP environments. When non-production systems no longer reflect reality, testing becomes less effective.
Edge cases are missed. Data combinations that exist in Production never appear in testing. Issues that could have been caught early only surface after go-live, sometimes resulting in service outages or disruptions that affect the public directly.
For organisations delivering essential services, this is not just a technical problem, it can become a trust issue.
The need for cost-efficient solutions for test data management
When I compare it with, for example, a private manufacturing company’s approach, for our Public Sector clients, the emphasis lies in transparency, accountability, and the ‘stewardship of public funds’.
When you plan and think about how to create test data, this is part of the conversation. “How do we create a process that is cost-effective long term and gives us the best results?”
Extreme compliance and regulation needs
Data Privacy Regulations such as GDPR (EU), POPIA (SA) and CCPA (California) focus on protecting personal data. For public organisations, they are working with citizens’ data, so it is paramount that every precaution is taken to protect this highly-sensitive data. This is not only in Production environments, but a special consideration in how you are anonymising data in the Testing systems.
Where Test and Training environments contain real data copied from Production, you need production-like controls to manage who has access. Where you have it more available for testers, you need a different solution to protect this data. For some institutions, the need for data sovereignty adds another layer of complexity, limiting where and how SAP data can be stored or processed.
Balancing the need for realistic data with the obligation to protect sensitive information is one of the most difficult challenges Public Sector IT teams face.
Slow data cycles slow everything else
When refreshing SAP environments takes weeks instead of hours, development slows down. When teams rely on manual scripts or specialist knowledge, operational overhead increases. And when data management becomes a bottleneck, innovation suffers.
Public Sector IT teams often find themselves spending more time managing SAP data than improving SAP services, time that could be better spent supporting the organisation’s core mission: serving the public.
Where does EPI-USE Labs fit in?
This is where we come into play. Rather than treating data copying and privacy as separate problems, the EPI-USE Labs Data Sync Manager (DSM) Suite addresses them together.
DSM is optimised for the SAP data model specific to Public Sector organisations and works by copying a subset of Production SAP data to non-production environments. DSM enables you to time-slice your transactional data, which is typically responsible for bulk of your database size. This reduces system size and refresh times while keeping data meaningful for testing.
At the same time, DSM ensures sensitive information is masked in non-production systems, including the ability to anonymise data before it even moves out of Production. This functionality is helping organisations meet data protection regulation requirements without sacrificing usability. On top of this, DSM gives you the power to selectively copy data on demand. So, if you need some data for testing but can’t wait for the next refresh cycle, you can copy that selection of data by itself and anonymise it in one step.
Together, these tools allow Public Sector organisations to test more effectively, move faster, and remain compliant, all without increasing risk or complexity.
DSM is the ideal solution for Public Sector data
DSM is a certified SAP add-on solution. Teams can use it by themselves, or they can reach out to us for support in doing the managed refreshes. For Public Sector organisations with a smaller Basis team, this is sometimes a great option.
With EPI-USE Labs and Data Sync Manager, your SAP test data stops being a bottleneck, and you can focus on delivering reliable services to the public.