IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

With a vision of making India a technology-centric economy of the future, various government projects now extensively cover concepts of E-Governance, Smart Cities, and Digitalization. The burgeoning population of our country coupled with diversity is increasing the amount of data generated on an individual level, making India an ideal place to implement big data-related technologies. The Internet ruled the roost for about two decades and now big data has emerged as the largest game-changing opportunity in the global market.

The Kenyan government will partner with industry and academic institutions to strengthen data collection, storage and deployment in order to accelerate socioeconomic progress, officials have said.

Victor Kyalo, CEO of Kenya ICT Authority, a government body which fosters development of ICT, said that effective data collection and analysis under-pins sound policy discourse to address social challenges like poverty, inequality, disease and crime.

With rapid innovation taking place in the technological fields like- AI, IoT, data analytics, smart cities have been one of the fast-paced developments to occur using the above-stated technologies.

So, what exactly is a smart city? A smart city refers to an urban area that is well-equipped with basic infrastructure for providing its citizens a quality lifestyle.

One of the most important aspects of creating a big data analytics strategy is empowering leaders, according to Jean-Michel Franco, director of product marketing for data governance at Talend.

Franco was addressing delegates at Computing's Big Data & Analytics Summit 2015, where he said data quality and not quantity was key to maximising insight using big data analytics.

Big Data is a term used to describe large and complex data sets that can provide insightful conclusions when analyzed and visualized in a meaningful way. Conventional database tools do not have capabilities to manage large volumes of unstructured data. The U.S. Government is therefore investing in programs to develop new tools and technologies to manage highly complex data. The basic components of Big Data include hardware, software, services and storage.

The Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) and the Cuban Ministry for Communications held an online training course: “Designing and developing big data systems” for Cuba. It was officially opened at Hanoi and La Habana. The training course took place within a week with the coordination of the Embassy of Cuba in Vietnam and two of Vietnam’s leading ICT groups: VNPT and Viettel.

According to a press release, the objective of the course was to provide advanced knowledge about big data such as analysing, designing, and developing big data systems for IT application and e-government development in regulatory agencies.

But often there's an information overload when it comes capturing and making use of so much data. According to a report from the Center for Digital Government, also owned by Government Technology's parent company, e.Republic, called Big Data, Big Promise, these eight simple tips will help you get started down the big data path -- and toward better outcomes.

Abu Dhabi was moving towards the future with an ambitious vision that reinforces a culture of excellence in society

Abu Dhabi has been ranked 11th in the Global Technology Index based on the World Digital Competitiveness Yearbook 2020 released by the International Institute for Management Development (IMD), in cooperation with the Abu Dhabi Department of Economic Development (ADDED), represented by the Competitiveness Office of Abu Dhabi (COAD), and the Department of Government Support – Abu Dhabi (DGS), represented by the Abu Dhabi Digital Authority (ADDA).

Enlisting Artificial Intelligence and Big Data in COVID-19 fight has helped Bahrain ‘save precious time’ and combat the pandemic in a better way, said a top iGA official. The advanced technologies helped Kingdom easing the burden on medical staff and allowed them to focus on active cases that require treatment and thorough observation.

Information & eGovernment Authority (iGA) Chief Executive, Mohammed Ali Al Qaed, said this during a webinar on the ‘Future Vision of Digital Government Through the Lens of COVID-19’ organised by Saudi Arabia’s eGovernment Programme ‘YESSER’ and the World Bank.

Recently installed chief information officer Peter Lawrence says the wide-ranging ICT reform program will provide the modern platform necessary for Defence to launch into "big data". The reform, which began in 2009, is expected to be completed by 2030. It is aimed at saving $1.9 billion in several areas including hardware, software and data centres.

“Where we are on the big data journey is probably a little bit in the early stages,” Dr Lawrence told IT Pro.

The Federal Government is studying a whole-of-government big data strategy among several other initiatives as part of its three-year ICT strategy released last year, according to an update today.

Announced last October, the 40-page ICT strategy document aimed to improve operational efficiency, services and stakeholder engagement until 2015.

The $12 million, three-year research project aims to advance fundamental mathematics and statistics to provide a framework, methodologies and tools for data-enabled scientific insight and discovery.

Speaking at the official launch of the knowledge discovery project at the Sydney headquarters of SIRCA - the body set up by Australian and New Zealand universities to provide global data and advanced tools to promote and enable financial research and innovation - NICTA CEO, Professor Hugh Durrant-Whyte, said the initiative was supported by $4 million from the Science and Industry Endowment Fund (SIEF) and $8 million from the research collaborators over the life of the three-year project.

This project taps into the data analytics expertise of key educational institutions, including Sydney University and Macquarie University. The partnership involves an expanded use of big data for new insights into the natural sciences, as well as Australia’s evolutionary history, and impact of climate change.

New developments driven by IoT and M2M - cities leading the chargeSmart Societies based on Big Data.

M2M (machine-to-machine) and IoT (Internet of Things) linked to data analytics (big data) developments are accelerating, and as more companies enter this sector and spend money on developing it, we will see further astonishing innovations emerge over the next few years. Applications are already being used in infrastructure, telecommunications, healthcare, education as well as in government; we will address this in detail in this report.

This strategy’s launch coincides with an April 2013 opening of a whole-of-government Data Analytics Centre of Excellence by the Australian Taxation Office. This centre marks a sea change in the way volumes of government data is handled, accessed and managed.

According to IDC, one of the large shifts will be away from bring your own device (BYOD) policies for employee smartphones and tablets in businesses, in favour of choose your own device (CYOD).

Concerns over data privacy are nothing new. But as a growing array of systems and devices connect to the Internet and new data sources emerge—including the Internet of things—the issues are becoming increasingly murky for many business executives. Striking a balance between the requirements of a business and the trust of consumers is paramount.

While most companies are collecting, storing and analyzing data, they continue to struggle with both the business and IT challenges of Big Data -- more data is not necessarily better.

Enormous amounts of data are being generated daily by smartphones, sensors, video cameras, smart meters, and other connected devices, adding to the huge store of information from traditional sources.

From transforming development initiatives to improving transparency, Big Data analytics could have a major impact on the way governments work

The anniversary of the signing of the first International Telegraph Convention and the creation of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) was celebrated on 17 May as World Telecommunication and Information Society Day (WTISD). The theme this year is “Big Data for Big Impact”.

As has been pointed out by Houlin Zhao, the secretary general of ITU, the theme for this year is to explore the power of Big Data for development. The analysis of vast amounts of data collected from the different devices that we use on a day-to-day basis provides an opportunity to discover hidden secrets and enables us to do predictive analysis and informed decision making across individual, organizational, societal, national and international levels.

China's investment in big data centers is expected to grow by more than 20 percent annually during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-25), and the cumulative investment in related fields is set to exceed 3 trillion yuan ($471 billion), the country's top economic regulator said on Friday.

Sun Wei, deputy director of the Department of Innovation and High-Tech Development at the National Development and Reform Commission, said the big data centers play a key role in supporting the operation of the digital economy.