Big Data Reality

When working with government clients it amazes me the broad description and ideas that are included in talking about big data.  The biggest hurdle to these types of projects is that IT or a program lead has an idea for data analysis but culturally the agency or program is not thinking about what Big Data could answer for them.

One area in a business case that is attempting to justify a Big Data or Analytics project that does not get a lot of attention is the organizational change management ( this is true for all IT projects I find ).  So how do you instill a culture where end users and executive

What I see are proof of concepts that try to pick an area that will then instil curiousity across the various business units.  So they can see what is possible.  Or if they have clear data sets then asking what else can we ask of them.

Another challenge I see is that most organizations have skill sets and knowledge as it applies to business intelligence tools or other analytics; however when you start to look at what a data scientist does and the algorithms they develop it becomes apparent that most organizations are lacking in the proper skills to implement a Big Data project.

Currently we are looking at helping government organizations by “hooking” them up with data scientist in order for them to play with data sets and try to answer some complicated questions: like workforce development or underground economics.  Predicting and understanding so that programs and legislation are more effective at their mandates.