Federal Government Big Data Potential and Realities (Information Week)
From the post:
Big data has enormous potential in the government sector, though little in the way of uptake and strategy at this point, according to a new report from tech industry advocacy non-profit TechAmerica Foundation.
Leaders of TechAmerica’s Federal Big Data Commission on Wednesday unveiled “Demystifying Big Data: A Practical Guide to Transforming the Business of Government.” The 39-page report provides big data basics like definitions and IT options, as well as potentials for deeper data value and government policy talks. Rife in strategy and pointers more than hard numbers on the impact of existing government data initiatives, the report pointed to big data’s “potential to transform government and society itself” by way of cues from successful data-driven private sector enterprises.
“Unfortunately, in the federal government, daily practice frequently undermines official policies that encourage sharing of information both within and among agencies and with citizens. Furthermore, decision-making by leaders in Congress and the Administration often is accomplished without the benefit of key information and without using the power of Big Data to model possible futures, make predictions, and fundamentally connect the ever increasing myriad of dots and data available,” the report’s authors wrote.
…(a while later)
The report recommended a five-step path to moving ahead with big data initiatives:
- Define the big data business opportunity.
- Assess existing and needed technical capabilities.
- Select a deployment pattern based on the velocity, volume and variety of data involved.
- Deploy the program “with an eye toward flexibility and expansion.”
- Review program against ROI, government policy and user needs.
Demystifying Big Data: A Practical Guide to Transforming the Business of Government (Report, PDF file) TechAmerica Foundation Big Data Commission (homepage)
The report is well worth your time but I would be cautious about the assumption that all data problems are “big data” problems.
My pre-big data strategy steps would be:
- Define the agency mission.
- Define the tasks necessary to accomplish #1.
- Define the role of data processing, any data processing, in meeting the tasks specified in #2.
- Evaluate the relevance of “big data” to the data processing defined in #3. (this is the equivalent of #1 in the commission report)
Unspecified notions about an agency’s mission, tasks to accomplish it, relevance of data processing to those tasks and finally, the relevance of “big data,” will result in disappointing and dysfunctional “Big Data” projects.
“Big data,” its potential, the needs of government, and its citizens, however urgent, are not reasons to abandon traditional precepts of project management.
Deciding on a solution, read “big data techniques,” before you understand and agree upon the problem to be solved, is a classic mistake.
Let’s not make it, again.
[…] Martin is writing in a UI context but the lesson he teaches is equally applicable to any part of software/project management. (Even U.S. federal government big data projects.) […]
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