This past March, the Association for Computing Machinery announced that its 2014 Turing Award would go to Dr. Michael Stonebraker. As a Google V.P. put it (Google puts up the $1M cash prize that goes with the award), “The efficient and effective management of Big Data is crucial to our 21st century global economy …Read… Read more »
Contrary to popular belief, governments have suffered from excess data- not a lack thereof. Before IT, as we know it today, revenue agencies used to rely solely on paper to store data files, most of it never to be used again. While we have come a long way from paper dependency, we still have muchRead… Read more »
People are much more likely to retain information – and become intrigued by it, by listening to an interesting story than by listening to recitation of points on a slide. We’re more likely to retain information, learn from it and be able to act on it if it contains up-to-the-minute data. And we’re more likely… Read more »
One of the many challenges involved in architecting “Big Data” solutions is in just moving the stuff around. Sometimes it makes sense to move the work to the Data (instead of the other way around). This assumes that your Data is already in a form that is amenable to heavy-duty analytics. More typically, you’re lookingRead… Read more »
Data visualization software can help data analysts more efficiently distill and communicate pertinent information to their customers. Likewise, the customization available in many data visualization packages enables consumers of data to more easily obtain and sort through the information they need. In a previous blog post, I explored how the U.S. General Services Administration isRead… Read more »
In December 2009, the Open Government Directive established deadlines for federal agencies to make quality information available to the public, all in the name of greater transparency. Recovery.gov was one of the leaders of this open government charge, and was actually established in February 2009, ahead of the directive. Today, there are a number ofRead… Read more »
During yesterday’s webinar “Connecting Data Silos to Create an Actionable View of Your Data” Nicholas Skytland, Data Evangelist for NASA, said it so simply, quoting Daniel Keys Morgan, “you can have data without information, but you cannot have information without data.” Data is an integral part of making any agency successful on all of itsRead… Read more »
For many people, staying the course, especially if things are going well, is the safest and easiest way forward. Moving away from the status quo and “the way it’s done” is difficult emotionally as well as intellectually. The same can hold true for federal agencies. As much as leadership may want to embrace change and… Read more »
At the U.S. General Services Administration, analysts in the agency’s Human Capital Analytics Division have leveraged data visualization technology to create a dynamic, highly customizable internal HR data dashboard
It is said that “knowledge is power.” But today, government agencies have to contend with a massively growing volume of data that can get in the way of actionable, mission-focused knowledge.