“The biggest issue for governments today is how to be relevant. If all citizens are treated with dignity and invited to collaborate, it can be easier for administrations to have a direct finger on the pulse of the nation rather than lose it in transmission through multiple layers of bureaucracy”.

This week has seen several landmark announcements at the intersection between big data and bureaucracy. Firstly, we discovered that the first Prime Minister to use big data to secure a win, Narendra Modi, continues to innovate in his position of power. His office is using sophisticated big data analytics techniques on the mygov.in portal to ascertain public opinion in key areas of policy, in a move which has been described as a blueprint for future democracy.

Whilst India move towards big data adoption, the EU continue to be wary. A landmark ruling in the European Parliament this week voted to “break up” Google, and separate its search functions from its other revenue streams. Whilst the European Parliament lack the autonomy to implement this ruling, it sends a strong and clear message to Google that the EU remain disdainful of their business practices. The UN also approved “The Right to Privacy in the Digital Age”, keeping data privacy and ethics firmly on the agenda.

Here’s our pick of the rest of the key data science announcements you may have missed this week.

TOP DATACONOMY ARTICLES

The Data Science Skills Network

As a data scientist, I am usually heads down in numbers, patterns, and code, but as crazy as it sounds, one of the hardest parts of my job is actually describing what I do. There are plenty of resources that offer descriptions and guides on the career of a data scientist. I’ve heard them described as those at the intersection of statistics, hacking abilities, and domain expertise. Or, as data analysts who live in San Francisco.

Why Organizations Need a Data Strategy

One of the most important tasks that a Data Architect is often asked to help with is the creation of an Enterprise Data Strategy. But why is Data Strategy so important and what exactly does it consist of, and lastly why is this a task that a Data Architect should be leading or supporting?                                                                                                                       …   

Top 5 Data Science Incubators and Accelerators

Unfortunately, one great idea does not make a successful company. When it comes to founding a data science startup, a visionary idea is essential, but so is hiring the right team, gaining an in-depth knowledge of your market, and putting in place the best business practices to help your idea flourish. And then of course there’s funding.

TOP DATACONOMY NEWS

Medium Rolls Out Slick Visualisation Tool Charted, No Strings Attached                                                                                                

Publishing platform Medium has open-sourced their proprietary data visualisation tool, Charted, on Monday. Now available for public use, data stored on Dropbox or Google Drive can be linked to charted.co and it returns a visualization of that data made shareable through a permalink.                                                                                                    …                                                                                                                                               …

Moogsoft Unveil Deep Monitoring of Docker and OpenStack on Incident.MOOG Platform

Moogsoft are the self-proclaimed “leading provider of operational intelligence for the new era of software”. To ensure that they’re firmly at the cutting edge of new technology, they’ve enhanced their Incident.MOOG software product – a service which provides deep monitoring support for hype-laden Docker container environments, as well as open source cloud computing platform OpenStack.

Qubole Provides Self-managing Data Platform as a Service on Microsoft Azure

Qubole, a self-service Platform for Big Data Analytics, announced a strategic relationship with Microsoft Azure in a step to make Big Data solutions more accessible to more people on more platforms. Big Data is an elastic workload and the ideal cloud use case. The Qubole Data Service is a great way to drive cloud services revenue while delivering improved time to value Microsoft Azure customers.

TOP UPCOMING EVENTS

2 December, 2014- Machine Learning for Sensory Data Analysis, Australia     

Following the inaugural event successfully held in conjunction with AI’2013 in Dunedin, MLSDA’14 joins PRICAI’14 to provide a forum that aims at bringing researchers on sensory technology, networking, and distributed data mining together in order to respond to the unprecedented research challenges and opportunities resulted from the synergy between big data, machine learning, and wireless sensor networking.

2-3 December, 2014- The Chief Data Officer Summit, New York

Data is the most competitive tool that your organization has in order to maintain relevance and growth in today’s complex environment. The ground-breaking Chief Data Officer Summit covers the latest innovations you need to advance your organization’s data strategy and management. In addition to the wealth of insight into data development, data governance and innovation, the summit will dissect the role of the Chief Data Officer like never before.

TOP DATACONOMY JOBS

Pricing Manager / Analyst, Wayfair   

As an Analyst of Pricing you will be responsible for pricing every product that appears on the website. You will manage the daily operational pricing functions while continually seeking to optimize procedures and test strategies to increase gross profit. If you love diving into deep data sets to identify areas for improvement, and be even more enthusiastic about solving those problems then do not hesitate to apply!

Business Intelligence Analyst, CupoNation

We are currently looking for new talent to join our highly professional and dynamic Business Intelligence team. In your role you will be responsible to design end-to-end solutions that meet our company’s Business Intelligence requirements. This covers the definition and implementation of technical requirements for ETL jobs, creation of new data layers and the optimization and enhancement of the current data warehouse infrastructure.

Earlier this year, India’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led a decisive and shocking victory in the Indian elections. Many have speculated that the party’s pioneering use of big data and social media analytics played a decisive role in the BJP’s and Narendra Modi’s success. Now that he’s in power, it would appear Modi’s innovative use of big data is far from over. Yesterday it was announced that the Prime Minster’s Office is using big data analytics to process citizen’s ideas and sentiments through the crowdsourcing platform mygov.in, as well as continuing to mine social media to get a broader picture of citizen’s thoughts and opinions on government action.

As Furhaad Shah reported back in May, the BJP used a rich variety of data science technqiues to track and enhance public opinion in the run-up to the election results.

“Despite the challenges [of big data], the rewards – as Modi has clearly demonstrated while employing this data to “drive donations, enroll volunteers, and improve the effectiveness of everything from door knocks…to social media” – are significant. BJP’s website, for example, planted cookies on all computers that visited its site, and then used information about these users’ further internet activity – i.e., the sites they visited after BJP’s – for customised advertisements.”

Now, the Modi government have enlisted the expertise of global consulting firm PwC to revolutinise their mygov.in platform. The platform was established in July, and has quickly become a treasure trove of information on how the Indian electorate is responding to government action, as well as ideas for policy augmentation. However, up until this point, dialogue on the site has been more of a monologue than a conversation.

This is about to change. As a senior official told The Economic Times, “There is a large professional data analytics team working behind the scenes to process and filter key points emerging from debates on mygov.in, gauge popular mood about particular issues from social media sites like Twitter and Facebook”. These key findings are then collated in special reports, with suggested actionable insights. Ministries are being urged to take these reports into account, with special regards for findings on 19 key policy challenges, including “expenditure reforms, job creation, energy conservation, skill development and government initiatives such as Clean India, Digital India and Clean Ganga.”

Undoubtedly, as the platform gains traction, scale will become a key issue. India is currently the second most populous country in the world, and is expected to surpass China in population by 2050. Modi is also urging Indian communities in America and Australia to add their voices to their platform. PwC’s executive director Neel Ratan believes “it is distinctly possible that 30-50 million people would be actively contributing to Mygov.in over the next year and a half, given its current pace of growth.”

He added that there is “a science and an art” behind the current data processing scheme. “We have people constantly looking at all ideas coming up, filtering them and after a lot of analysis, correlating it to senti ments coming through on the rest of social media.”

“The problem in the West has been that the US, Australia and UK follow a public management philosophy that treats citizens as consumers. That’s ridiculous, because a consumer pays the bill and complains, while a citizen engages differently and takes responsibility.”

As we have previously reported, data is being criminally underutilised by federal departments in the Western world. The ultimate challenge big data faces in government is that data doesn’t trump ideology; and in fact, statistics can be skewed and manipulated to further boost ideologies. Yet, data can become a driving force when it pushes past correlation and into causality- show a politician exactly how data can drive his policies, and they just might listen. What crucially distinguishes the mygov.in platform is that it’s not just mining the data, but turning this data into actionable insights for India’s ministries.

In a world where citizens feel increasingly disenfranchised, ignored and- particularly in the case of Western countries- consumerised, the Indian government’s big data scheme could truly prove to be revolutionary for democracy in the 21st century.

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Eileen McNulty-Holmes – Editor

Eileen has five years’ experience in journalism and editing for a range of online publications. She has a degree in English Literature from the University of Exeter, and is particularly interested in big data’s application in humanities. She is a native of Shropshire, United Kingdom.

Email: eileen@dataconomy.ru