Technological advancements and the exponential growth of information are fundamentally reshaping business operations across various sectors, including government. The generation of government data and digital archiving rates are surging, driven by the rapid proliferation of mobile devices and applications, smart sensors and IoT devices, cloud computing solutions, and citizen-facing portals. As digital information expands in volume and complexity, the challenges associated with information management, processing, storage, security, and disposition become increasingly intricate. Emerging tools for capture, search, discovery, and analysis are enabling organizations to extract valuable insights from unstructured data. The government sector is reaching a critical tipping point, recognizing that information is a strategic asset. Consequently, governments must protect, leverage, and analyze both structured and unstructured information to better fulfill 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, personnel, 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 represents one of the intelligent industry solutions that enable governments to make better decisions by taking action based on patterns revealed through the analysis of large volumes of data—both related and unrelated, structured and unstructured.
However, achieving these goals requires far more than simply 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," noted Tom Kalil and Fen Zhao of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy 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 allocated more than $200 million to maximize the potential of the Big Data explosion and the tools required to analyze it.
The challenges posed by Big Data are nearly as daunting as its promise is encouraging. One significant challenge is efficient data storage. With budgets always tight, agencies must minimize the per-megabyte cost of storage while keeping data easily accessible so users can retrieve it when and how they need it. Backing up massive quantities of data further exacerbates this challenge.
Effectively analyzing data presents another major hurdle. Many agencies utilize commercial tools that allow them to sift through mountains of data, identifying 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. This 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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