In recent years, central and local government and associated bodies have found it increasingly difficult to manage, store, process and ultimately make sense of the volume of data that is created within their own organisations and across the wider public sector ecosystem. The emergence of ‘Big Data’ has the potential to transform government and in the process contribute massive efficiency gains, create thousands of jobs across the UK and drive innovation and entrepreneurship as the adoption of big data analytics increases. Big Data is not a technology, but rather a phenomenon resulting from the vast amount of raw information generated across society, and collected by commercial and government organisations, coupled with the need for more information from consumers.
Whilst the term Big Data has become a popular buzzword, the real question for most decision makers, both in the private sector as well as public sector is what value can it deliver to my business or indeed the government and the people it serves?
So what does ‘Big Data’ mean for the Government and the wider UK economy?
In April 2012, the Centre for Economic and Business Research (CEBR) published the report Data Equity – Unlocking the value of Big Data. This report estimates that Big Data can contribute a potential £216 billion of GDP to the UK economy by 2017. This is no small amount to overlook in these difficult times.
Bearing this mind, the government has put some initiatives in place to help reach those targets. For some time the Government has been making public data available through its data.gov.uk service and encouraging everyone to use it. This effort was partly down to a need to be more transparent with the voter but also to promote innovation and new business through using this data. The CEBR report quotes that “innovation opportunities are projected to contribute £24 billion, while the increased prospects for small business creation are projected to be worth £42 billion.�? This is a substantial amount of money, which data.gov.uk and the Open Data Initiative co-founded by Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Professor Nigel Shadbolt are going to help to contribute to.
Big Data Partnership believes a more difficult challenge facing the government is how they intend to reach the €100 billion quoted by McKinsey in their ground- breaking big data report published in May 2011 that could be saved across Europe in operational efficiencies just by using Big Data. Hitting these figures requires the government to build a strong initiative internally and that requires the right expertise and understanding of how to achieve the figures. Mike Merritt-Holmes, CEO, Big Data Partnership warns “Organisations across the UK are consistently approaching us looking for help in educating them on Big Data technology and in guiding them in achieving a solid and achievable strategy around Big Data. Our Big Data and Hadoop Masterclasses and Discovery Consultancy are helping them to achieve this goal but they are quickly realising that internal knowledge is not the only challenge.�? Merritt-Holmes goes on to say “To gain real competitive edge and reach those goals, you have to have the right talent and the right teams with the relevant skill set. Apart from a minority of early-adopter companies, this does not exist today across many of the enterprises. Recruiting is one option but with very few individuals available, the Government will struggle to source suitable candidates without paying a significant premium. Therefore, the natural option is to explore external professional help or train within.�?
Big Data Partnership offer courses aimed at both business executives and IT staff. With so many technologies and solutions available, Big Data Partnership have partnered with leading technology vendors and providers to offer a variety of training and industry-recognised certification in big data technology. Organisations can often struggle to identify where in their large data architecture big data software and techniques can be utilised. Big Data Partnership have helped large enterprise organisations understand where those use cases are, where a Big Data solution fits into their existing infrastructure and how to enable organisations to be more data-driven.
Even after overcoming these challenges, the government will need to ensure that data privacy issues and questions arising from the increasing use of Big Data analytics is addressed. As enterprise organisations start to get to grips with their data and use it to understand and target consumers, will the current policies be suitably equipped to deal with new data sources and analysis to protect consumers?
It remains that the £216 billion attributable to the adoption of Big Data in the UK is an incredible target, which will bring significant benefit to the UK economy. However, unless the Government starts planning for this now and putting the right investments and strategies in place these estimations will be extremely difficult to achieve.
Big Data Partnership is the leading UK-based big data specialist service provider, offering a combination of Professional Services and Certified Training to help unlock value in complex data. With a team of industry experts and thought leaders in big data technologies, Big Data Partnership has the knowledge and experience needed to Discover, Develop & Deliver scalable and reliable big data solutions, driving exciting results for its customers.
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