Technological advancements and the exponential growth of information are fundamentally reshaping business operations across various sectors, including government. The volume of government data generation and digital archiving is surging, driven by the rapid proliferation of mobile devices and applications, smart sensors and devices, cloud computing solutions, and citizen-facing portals. As digital information becomes more expansive and complex, the management, processing, storage, security, and disposition of this data also become increasingly complicated. New tools for capturing, searching, discovering, and analyzing information are helping organizations extract valuable insights from unstructured data. The government sector is reaching a critical juncture, recognizing information as a strategic asset. Governments must now protect, leverage, and analyze both structured and unstructured information to better serve the public and meet mission requirements. As government leaders strive to evolve into data-driven organizations to successfully accomplish their missions, they are laying the groundwork to correlate dependencies across 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 serves as an intelligent industry solution that enables governments to make better decisions by taking action based on patterns revealed through the analysis of large volumes of data—whether related or unrelated, structured or unstructured.
However, achieving these goals requires more than just accumulating massive quantities 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 noted 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 included over $200 million to capitalize on the explosion of Big Data and the tools needed to analyze it.
The challenges posed by Big Data are nearly as daunting as its promise is encouraging. Efficient data storage is one of these challenges. With budgets always tight, agencies must minimize the cost per megabyte of storage while keeping data easily accessible so users can retrieve it whenever and however they need it. The challenge is heightened by the need to back up massive quantities of data.
Effectively analyzing data is another major challenge. Many agencies employ commercial tools that allow them to sift through mountains of data, spotting trends that help them operate more efficiently. (A recent study by MeriTalk found that federal IT executives believe Big Data could help agencies save more than $500 billion while also fulfilling mission objectives).
Custom-developed Big Data tools are also enabling agencies to address their data analysis needs. For example, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Computational Data Analytics Group has made its Piranha data analytics system available to other agencies. The system has helped medical researchers identify links that can alert doctors to aortic aneurysms before they occur. It is also used for more routine tasks, such as sifting through resumes to connect job candidates with hiring managers.
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