Technological advancements and the exponential growth of information are fundamentally reshaping business operations across various sectors, including the government sector. The volume of data generated and digitized by governments is increasing rapidly, driven by the proliferation of mobile devices and applications, smart sensors, cloud computing solutions, and citizen-facing digital portals. As digital information expands and grows more complex, the management, processing, storage, security, and disposal of that information also become more challenging. Emerging tools for capture, search, discovery, and analysis are enabling organizations to derive valuable insights from unstructured data. The government sector is reaching a critical juncture, recognizing information as a strategic asset. To better serve citizens and fulfill mission requirements, governments must protect, leverage, and analyze both structured and unstructured data. As government leaders work to evolve their organizations into data-driven entities, they are establishing the foundation to correlate dependencies across events, personnel, processes, and information.
High-impact government solutions are being developed by integrating the most disruptive technologies:
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Mobile devices and applications
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Cloud services
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Social business technologies and networking
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Big Data and analytics
Big Data represents an intelligent industry solution that empowers governments to make superior decisions by acting on patterns identified through the analysis of vast volumes of data—whether related or unrelated, structured or unstructured.
However, achieving these outcomes requires more than just 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," Tom Kalil and Fen Zhao of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy wrote in a post on the OSTP Blog.
The White House took a significant step toward helping agencies identify these technologies by establishing the National Big Data Research and Development Initiative in 2012. This initiative allocated over $200 million to maximize the potential of the Big Data explosion and the tools required to analyze it.
The challenges posed by Big Data are as formidable as its potential benefits are encouraging. Efficient data storage is one key challenge. With budgets remaining tight, 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.
Effective data analysis is another major hurdle. Many agencies utilize commercial tools that allow them to sift through vast amounts of data, identifying trends that enhance operational efficiency. (A recent study by MeriTalk found 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 enabling agencies to meet their data analysis needs. For instance, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Computational Data Analytics Group 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.
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