Advances in technology and the growing volume of information are reshaping business practices across various industries, including government. The generation and digital archiving of government data have increased due to the rapid proliferation of mobile devices and applications, smart sensors and devices, cloud computing solutions, and citizen-facing portals. As digital information becomes more extensive and complex, the challenges in managing, processing, storing, securing, and disposing of this data also grow. 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. Governments need to protect, leverage, and analyze both structured and unstructured data to better serve their citizens and meet mission requirements. As leaders strive to transform into data-driven organizations to achieve their goals, they are 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:
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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 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 related or unrelated, structured or unstructured.
Achieving these outcomes requires more than just accumulating vast amounts of data. "Making sense of these volumes of Big Data necessitates cutting-edge tools and technologies that can analyze and extract useful knowledge from diverse and extensive information streams," 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 to help agencies find these technologies by launching the National Big Data Research and Development Initiative in 2012. The initiative allocated more than $200 million to harness the potential of Big Data and develop the necessary tools for its analysis.
The challenges posed by Big Data are as formidable as its promise is encouraging. Efficient data storage is one such challenge. Given tight budgets, agencies must minimize the cost per megabyte of storage while ensuring that data remains easily accessible to users when and how they need it. Backing up large volumes of data further complicates this task.
Effectively analyzing the data is another major challenge. 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 over $500 billion while also achieving their mission objectives.
Custom-developed Big Data tools are also aiding agencies in analyzing their data. For example, 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 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 match job candidates with hiring managers.
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