Advances in technology and the proliferation of information are transforming how business is conducted across various industries, including operations for government. The rate of data generation and digital archiving within government agencies is increasing due to the rapid adoption of mobile devices and applications, smart sensors and devices, cloud computing solutions, and citizen-facing portals. As the volume and complexity of digital information grow, the challenges related to information management, processing, storage, security, and disposition also become more intricate. New capture, search, discovery, and analysis tools are enabling organizations to derive valuable insights from their unstructured data. The government market is at a critical juncture, recognizing that information is a strategic asset. Government entities need to protect, leverage, and analyze both structured and unstructured information to better serve the public and meet mission requirements. As leaders in government strive to evolve into data-driven organizations, they are laying the groundwork to correlate dependencies across events, people, processes, and information.
High-value solutions for government will be created through 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 streams of information," according to Tom Kalil and Fen Zhao of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
The White House took a significant step in 2012 by establishing the National Big Data Research and Development Initiative. This initiative allocated more than $200 million to capitalize on the explosion of Big Data and the tools needed for its analysis.
The challenges posed by Big Data are as formidable as its promise is encouraging. Efficient data storage is one such challenge. Budget constraints require agencies to minimize per-megabyte storage costs while ensuring easy access to data for users. Backing up massive quantities of data further complicates this issue.
Effective data analysis presents another major challenge. Many agencies use commercial tools to sift through large datasets, identifying trends that can enhance operational efficiency. 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 analyze their data effectively. For example, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Computational Data Analytics Group has made its Piranha data analytics system available to other government entities. This system has aided medical researchers in identifying a link that can alert doctors to aortic aneurysms before they occur. It is also used for more routine tasks, such as filtering through resumes to connect job candidates with hiring managers.
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