We generate data everywhere, every
day, in many different forms; from our phones, to our payment cards, to our smart
televisions, and computing devices. Even the infrastructure of where we live creates
data – the traffic signals, speed cameras, billboards, buses; anything that
contains a micro-processor or sensor-equipped, provides data about us.
With an estimated “2.5 quintillion bytes of
data” produced every day, it’s vital to be looking at how you can utilise the
data available to help grow your business.
In this post,
we’ll be exploring the possibilities of harnessing Big Data to benefit the
public sector.
Big Data in the Public Sector
Armed
forces
There are endless opportunities to
use big data in the public sector. One example would be allocating armed forces
(police, army) resources by predicting when and where crimes, or war-like
situations, are most likely to occur.
Healthcare
In the Healthcare sector, there is a
boundless amount of data available about every patient, including condition/procedures,
medication, and medical history.
A recent example of big data in
action was a solution created by IBM for Brigham
& Women's Hospital. This application
of big data allowed for multiple drug studies to be conducted simultaneously,
allowing researchers to design, test, and apply brand-new algorithms to quickly
identify drug risk warning signals.
Another example saw Google analysing
clusters of regional search terms to predict flu outbreaks faster than was
possible using traditional hospital admission records.
Agriculture
Big data can be applied throughout
the public sector. In the agricultural arena, genomic analysis is now being
used extensively to speed up the breeding of crops (such as rice) for drought
resistance.
The Big Data movement
IQSS (Institute for Quantitative
Social Science) is a centre of expertise for multi-disciplinary assignments
intended at solving the problems around us in society.
Gary King, the director of IQSS says,
“There is a movement of quantification rumbling across fields in academia and
science, industry and government and non-profits.”
King reports that many of faculty
members in the government department are doing some type of data analysis, as
are members of the sociology, economics, public health, medical, and law
departments.
It’s hard to find or think of an area
that hasn’t been affected by big data.
While big data can seem daunting, a
good resource for CIOs in the public sector to get to grips with it is 17 Steps to Implement a Public Sector Big Data Project. This provides a tailored 3-stage process from
start to square one (which can often be the trickiest stage).
Qualitative Experts and Statistical Researchers
In every field big data follows a
similar pattern; first comes the qualitative experts in their field, followed
then by the statistical researchers (who may or may not know the details of the
field). The statistical researchers use sophisticated tools and advanced data
analysis, to add tremendous insight and value to the sector.
The future of Big Data
There are many more potential
benefits of big data in society that are yet to be explored. By developing a
deeper understanding of what big data is, and how it can be applied, it can be
utilised for limitless possibilities.
With the improvement of enhanced statistical
and computational methods, the big data revolution is already under way. The public
sector is generating terabytes of data every day and it’s time for it to start
being put to good use.
Academics have less access to the
real world data than modern day businesses, especially social-science data
which has big restrictions when it comes to the research capabilities. The
greatest potential for using big data to its fullest is in the fields of public
health and medicine where people are suffering or even dying every day simply
because data is either not being used or shared properly.