Posts Tagged: data

“Bureaucracy” – Iron Cage to Social Network

I hate word “bureaucracy” because it degrades public sector workers at all levels. For many reasons, countless pejorative metaphors, theories, and political actions about public sector workers have decorated the iron cage. Public sector staff can weave webs supporting real collaboration, see contacts outside the hierarchy and rules; they seek out connections with people who… Read more »

New Zealand: Finding the Balance Between Privacy and Data

Good: Big data. The Cloud. Information economy. Internet of Things. Medical advances. Engaged citizens. Crowdfunding. 3D printing. Crowdsourcing. Co-creation. Co-production. Open source. Open government. Smart cars. Bad: Identity theft. Big Brother. Phishing. Spyware. Malware. Spam. Zombie computers. Key logging. Hackers. Pharming. 419s . Social isolation. Marginalization. Privacy breaches. SkyNet. Sorry about that last one –Read… Read more »

“Tool” Crazy After All These Years

We have all run into the office cliché similar to the saying “if all you use is a hammer everything looks like a nail.” Another way of saying this is that if all you see are nails, anything looks like a hammer. In both cases, the focus of misunderstanding is based on overlooking the particularsRead… Read more »

The Unified Data Architecture in Action

This is an excerpt from our recent industry perspective, How Unified Data Architecture Can Revolutionize Analytics in Government. To read the full thing, head here. To see what a UDA can do to elevate business performance, look no further than the transportation industry. The airlines were one of the first to tackle the concept of growingRead… Read more »

Harness the Power of Unstructured HR Data with Text Analytics

Federal HR professionals with access to electronic employee databases typically have access to a wealth of so-called “structured” employee data, or information that can be quickly counted and analyzed in spreadsheet programs to create pivot tables and reports. Examples of structured HR data include employee salary and demographic information and employee survey responses, all ofRead… Read more »

How To Be Excellent!

Excelling is often defined as going above and beyond what’s expected. So in its very nature, achieving excellence is not something that should come easily. In government contracting, excelling is not something that’s common sense. It’s a complex task, and it takes teamwork and collaboration for government workers to understand the best ways of goingRead… Read more »

“Where Does Fed Money Go?” Using a Canonical Model to Find It

For decades, OMB and Departments have been trying to trace federal grants and loans to specific places: cities, neighborhoods, farms, enterprise zones, individual houses or stores. The complexity of community development, economic development, rural development, job creation, or just accounting have plagued how funds can be traced. The purpose of tracing the money is toRead… Read more »

How English Class Helps You Understand Unstructured Data

This is a salute to my brethren from the liberal arts, but also anyone who has ever thought English composition class was useless. What is it about understanding how writing happens that is so boring even if writing itself is fun, especially if you have only 140 characters and are not bound by spelling orRead… Read more »