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Shift 11: Big Data for Decisions

The tipping point: The first government to replace its census with big-data sources
By 2025: 83% of respondents expected this tipping point to have occurred
More data exists about communities than ever before. And, the ability to understand and manage this
data is improving all the time. Governments may start to find that their previous ways of collecting data
are no longer needed, and may turn to big-data technologies to automate their current programmes and
deliver new and innovative ways to service citizens and customers.
Leveraging big data will enable better and faster decision-making in a wide range of industries and
applications. Automated decision-making can reduce complexities for citizens and enable businesses
and governments to provide real-time services and support for everything from customer interactions
to automated tax filings and payments.
The risks and opportunities in leveraging big data for decision-making are significant. Establishing trust
in the data and algorithms used to make decisions will be vital. Citizen concerns over privacy and
establishing accountability in business and legal structures will require adjustments in thinking, as well
as clear guidelines for use in preventing profiling and unanticipated consequences. Leveraging big data
to replace processes that today are done manually may render certain jobs obsolete, but may also
create new categories of jobs and opportunities that currently do not exist in the market.

Positive impacts
– Better and faster decisions
– More real-time decision-making
– Open data for innovation
– Jobs for lawyers
– Reduced complexity and more efficiency for citizens
– Cost savings
– New job categories

Negative impacts
– Job losses
– Privacy concerns
– Accountability (who owns the algorithm?)
– Trust (how to trust data?)
– Battles over algorithms

Unknown, or cuts both ways

– Profiling
– Change in regulatory, business and legal structures

The shift in action

The volume of business data worldwide, across all companies, doubles every 1.2 years.
Source: “A Comprehensive List of Big Data Statistics,” Vincent Granville, 21 October 2014:
http://www.bigdatanews.com/profiles/blogs/a-comprehensive-list-of-big-data-statistics

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“Farmers from Iowa to India are using data from seeds, satellites, sensors, and tractors to make better
decisions about what to grow, when to plant, how to track food freshness from farm to fork, and how
to adapt to changing climates.”
Source: “What’s the Big Deal with Data”, BSA | Software Alliance, http://data.bsa.org/
“To better inform restaurant-goers about unsanitary venues, San Francisco successfully piloted a
collaboration with Yelp—fusing the city’s restaurant health inspection data onto the site’s restaurant
review pages. If you open up the page of restaurant Tacos El Primo, for example, it shows a health
score of 98 out of 100 (below). Yelp ratings are pretty powerful. Apart from serving as a mouthpiece
for the city to tell residents about food hazards, the collaboration is potentially a way to shame repeat-
offender restaurants into complying with health standards.”
Source: http://www.citylab.com/cityfixer/2015/04/3-cities-using-opendata-in-creative-ways-to-
solve-problems/391035/

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