Advances in technology and the growing volume of information are reshaping business practices across various sectors, including government. The rapid expansion of mobile devices and applications, smart sensors and devices, cloud computing solutions, and citizen-facing portals has led to a significant increase in data generation and digital archiving by government entities. As the amount and complexity of digital information grow, the challenges related to managing, processing, storing, securing, and disposing of this data also become more intricate. New tools for capturing, searching, discovering, and analyzing unstructured data are enabling organizations to derive valuable insights. The government sector is at a critical juncture, recognizing that information is a strategic asset and that it must protect, leverage, and analyze both structured and unstructured data to better serve its mission requirements. Government leaders are working to transform their organizations into data-driven entities, laying the foundation to understand the interdependencies among events, people, processes, and information.
High-value government solutions will emerge from a combination of the most disruptive technologies:
-
Mobile devices and applications
-
Cloud services
-
Social business technologies and networking
-
Big Data and analytics
Big Data is one of the intelligent industry solutions that enable government to make better decisions by acting on patterns revealed through the analysis of large volumes of data—whether structured or unstructured, related or unrelated.
Achieving these goals requires more than just amassing vast amounts of data. "To make sense of these large volumes of Big Data, cutting-edge tools and technologies are necessary to analyze and extract useful insights from diverse streams of information," according to 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 to help agencies find these technologies by establishing the National Big Data Research and Development Initiative in 2012. This initiative allocated over $200 million to capitalize on the surge in Big Data and the tools needed for its analysis.
The challenges posed by Big Data are as formidable as its potential is promising. Efficient data storage is one of these challenges. Given tight budgets, agencies must minimize the cost per megabyte of storage while ensuring easy access to the data so that users can retrieve it quickly and in the format they need. Backing up large volumes of data further complicates this challenge.
Effective data analysis is another major hurdle. Many agencies use commercial tools to sift through vast amounts of data, identifying trends that can enhance operational efficiency. A recent study by MeriTalk found that federal IT executives believe Big Data could help agencies save more than $500 billion while also achieving their mission objectives.
Custom-developed Big Data tools are also assisting agencies in analyzing their data. 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 aided medical researchers in discovering a link that can alert doctors to aortic aneurysms before they occur. It is also used for more routine tasks, such as screening resumes to connect job candidates with hiring managers.
Read more...
