Ricard Munné
From the pure technological point of view, BIG has already identified some areas where further research should be promoted and coordinated. Even though many projects are working in areas of relevance to Big Data, they are not always referring to that explicitly. The technical analysis has been structured in the following areas, Data Acquisition, Data Analysis, Data Curation, Data Storage and Data Usage.
The use of Big Data technologies applied to different markets is already showing a great impact by improving processes performance and therefore impacting the global productivity. BIG has selected a wide spectrum of domains based on several criteria, including potential in terms of business, timeframe to reach that potential( balancing short and long term approaches), and availability of data in the different application sectors. Targeted sectors are Health Care, Public Sector, Finance & Insurance, Telco, Media & Entertainment and Manufacturing & Retail
4. Public sector
Public sector is increasingly aware of the potential value to be gained from Big Data. Governments generate and collect vast quantities of data through their everyday activities, such as managing pensions and allowances payments, tax collection, National Health System patient care, recording traffic data and issuing official documents. BIG is taking into account current socio‐economic and technological trends, like boosting productivity in an environment with significant budgetary constraints, the increasing demand of medical and social services, and the standardization and interoperability as important requirements for public sector technologies and applications.
Some examples of potential benefits are:
• Open Government and Data sharing. The free‐flow of information from organizations to citizens promotes greater trust and transparency between citizens and government, in line with open data initiatives. Prefilling of information( based on the‘ once only’ principle) would be another benefit, with reduction of mistakes and speeding up processing time.
• Sentiment analysis. Information from both traditional and new social media( websites, blogs, twitter feeds …) can help policy makers to prioritize services and be aware of citizens’ real interests and opinions.
• Citizen segmentation and personalization. Segmenting and tailoring government services to individuals can increase effectiveness, efficiency, and citizen satisfaction
• Economic analysis. Correlation of multiple sources of data will help government economists with more accurate financial forecasts.
• Tax agencies. Automated algorithms to analyse large datasets and integration of structured and unstructured data from social media and other sources will help them validate information or flag potential frauds.
• Threat detection and prevention. Track and analyse citizen activities to spot abnormal behavioural patterns.
• Cyber Security. Collect, organize and analyse vast amounts of data from government computer networks with sensitive data or critical services, to give cyber defenders greater ability to detect and counter malicious attacks.
5. Progress so far and next steps
BIG is analysing the situation in the public sector domain to provide a roadmap to guide the path from the AS‐ IS situation to the TO‐BE situation, focusing on the most challenging aspects in the Public Sector( data availability and data sharing through governmental organizations, or even citizens and businesses). Appropriate dissemination activities are being provided based on the impact of successful initiatives.
At this point, a first draft of Sector’ s requisites has been produced with the requirements for the potential use of Big Data technologies. The final version of these requisites will be integrated in the roadmap that will be produced in a later stage. This roadmap will be discussed, shared and made public among all the interested stakeholders, and should cover a complete view of all the actions that should be performed in the coming years. Consensus and representation of all relevant players is guaranteed in our work. The integrated version
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