Advancements in technology and the exponential growth of data are reshaping business operations across various sectors, including the government sector. Government agencies are experiencing a surge in data generation and digital archiving, driven by the rapid proliferation of mobile devices and applications, smart sensors, cloud computing solutions, and citizen-facing portals. As digital information becomes more expansive and complex, the management, processing, storage, security, and disposition of this data become increasingly intricate. New tools for capture, search, discovery, and analysis are enabling organisations to extract valuable insights from unstructured data. The government sector is at a critical juncture, recognising that information is a strategic asset. Governments must protect, leverage, and analyse both structured and unstructured information to better serve citizens and meet mission objectives. As government leaders strive to evolve into data-driven organisations to successfully achieve their missions, they are laying the groundwork to correlate dependencies across events, people, processes, and information.
High-value government solutions are being developed through the integration of the most disruptive technologies:
- Mobile devices and applications
- Cloud services
- Social business technologies and networking
- Big Data and analytics
Big Data represents an intelligent industry solution that enables government entities to make better decisions by taking action based on patterns revealed through the analysis of large volumes of data—both related and unrelated, structured and unstructured.
However, achieving these outcomes requires far more than simply accumulating massive quantities of data. "Making sense of these volumes of Big Data requires cutting-edge tools and technologies that can analyse and extract useful knowledge from vast and diverse streams of information," wrote Tom Kalil and Fen Zhao of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy in a post on the OSTP Blog.
The White House took a significant step toward helping agencies identify these technologies when it established the National Big Data Research and Development Initiative in 2012. This initiative included more than $200 million to maximise the potential of the Big Data explosion and the tools needed to analyse it.
The challenges posed by Big Data are nearly as daunting as its promise is encouraging. Efficiently storing data is one such challenge. With budgets always tight, agencies must minimise the per-megabyte cost of storage and keep data readily accessible so users can retrieve it when and how they need it. Backing up massive quantities of data further heightens this challenge.
Effectively analysing data is another major challenge. Many agencies employ commercial tools that enable them to sift through mountains of data, spotting trends that help them operate more efficiently. A recent study by MeriTalk found that federal IT executives believe Big Data could help agencies save more than $500 billion while also fulfilling mission objectives.
Custom-developed Big Data tools are also allowing agencies to address their need for data analysis. For example, Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Computational Data Analytics Group has made its Piranha data analytics system available to other agencies. The system has helped medical researchers identify a link that can alert doctors to aortic aneurysms before they occur. It is also used for more routine tasks, such as sifting through resumes to connect job candidates with hiring managers.
Read more...
