Technological advancements and the exponential growth of information are fundamentally reshaping business operations across numerous sectors, including the public sector. Government data generation and digital archiving volumes are surging, driven by the proliferation of mobile devices and applications, smart sensors and connected devices, cloud computing solutions, and citizen-facing digital portals. As digital information expands and becomes increasingly complex, the management, processing, storage, security, and disposition of that data become more intricate. Emerging tools for capture, search, discovery, and analysis are enabling organizations to extract valuable insights from unstructured data. The government sector is at a critical juncture, recognizing information as a strategic asset. Governments must now protect, leverage, and analyze both structured and unstructured information to better serve citizens and meet mission objectives. As government leaders strive to evolve into data-driven organizations, they are establishing the foundation to correlate dependencies across events, personnel, processes, and information.
High-impact government solutions will emerge from integrating the most disruptive technologies:
- Mobile devices and applications
- Cloud services
- Social business technologies and networking
- Big Data and analytics
Big Data represents a transformative industry solution, empowering governments to make superior decisions by acting on patterns revealed through the analysis of vast volumes of data—both related and unrelated, structured and unstructured.
However, achieving this requires more than simply accumulating large amounts of data. "Making sense of these volumes of Big Data requires cutting-edge tools and technologies that can analyze and extract useful knowledge from vast and diverse streams of information," noted Tom Kalil and Fen Zhao from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy in a post on the OSTP Blog.
The White House took a significant step toward supporting agencies in finding these technologies by establishing the National Big Data Research and Development Initiative in 2012. This initiative allocated over $200 million to capitalize on the explosion of Big Data and develop the necessary tools to analyze it.
The challenges posed by Big Data are nearly as daunting as the promise it offers. Efficiently storing data is one such challenge. With budgets always under pressure, agencies must minimize the cost per megabyte of storage while ensuring data remains easily accessible so users can retrieve it whenever and however they need it. Backing up these massive data volumes further intensifies the challenge.
Effectively analyzing data is another major hurdle. Many agencies utilize commercial tools that enable them to sift through vast amounts of data, identifying trends that enhance operational efficiency. (A recent MeriTalk study revealed that federal IT executives believe Big Data could help agencies save over $500 billion while also meeting mission objectives.)
Custom-developed Big Data tools are also allowing agencies to meet their data analysis needs. For instance, the Computational Data Analytics Group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory has made its Piranha data analytics system available to other agencies. This system has helped medical researchers identify links that can alert doctors to aortic aneurysms before they occur. It is also used for routine tasks, such as sifting through resumes to match job candidates with hiring managers.
Read more...
