Big Data and Analytics in Government
I will be speaking with my colleague Stephan Mitchev on Big Data and its application at a presentation titled “Unity in Diversity: Towards Unified Data Future” at the Big Data & Analytics in Government Summit.
As the title suggests, we will focus not on the size aspect of “big data” but on its diversity — the fact that we work at an organization that deals with data of varied systems and formats and yet we need to put it to good use.
The Era of “Datafication”
Starting with the notion that, as Kenneth Cukier eloquently explains, we have arrived at the era of “datafication”, we need to consider what we do with the massive volumes of data we collect.
Unless we make use of data, should we collect it?
Is there value to data that is collected but not used? Shouldn’t we it a rule that:
– If we collect data, we need to analyze it
– Unless we analyze data, we should not collect it
Establishing these basic principles, we can then approach the architectural challenges of processing and analyzing massive volumes of data in order to gain insight from it.
What challenges do you face? How do you approach and resolve them?