“Big Data has almost got to the point where the term puts people off,” admits Vivek Puthucode, General Manager of Public Services, Asia Pacific Japan, SAP. “So it is really important to focus on the immense opportunity, using technology that’s available today, to share information within and between agencies and significantly improve their operational decision-making.”
Puthucode leads the SAP team providing end-to-end support to customers across the Government, Education and Healthcare sectors in the region, holding responsibility for all aspects of the business driving SAP’s strategy, market enablement and customer advocacy.
So many organisations have latched on to the term, that the underlying promise is in danger of being obscured by all the marketing hoopla. Yet ask yourself a few questions, and the critical role of harnessing Big Data insights is easily understood: Are your programmes improving the lives of your citizens? Which schools should expand? Where should you open new schools? How can government resources best be employed? Are you making the right decisions?
“It boils down to ensuring that the employment of resources can be evidence-based,” says Puthucode. “Take healthcare as an example, typically the single biggest item of expenditure in a society. If you’re not spending healthcare investment well then you’re wasting a lot of money - and you’re missing an opportunity to improve the quality of healthcare services for people.”
Typically healthcare information is widely distributed - across a network of healthcare providers, pharmacies and individual citizens. If this fragmented data could be put to better use, then you could better situate medical facilities, and move into the realm of preventative care - building infrastructure around diabetes hotspots, for example.
Use Case #1: Tokyo Traffic
SAP has been partnering with the Nomura Research Institute in Japan in order to demonstrate that Big Data can be collected, analysed and acted upon in real time. In this case current traffic conditions in Tokyo are correlated to historic traffic patterns, and then combined with pathfinding information - all in the time it takes a driver to think ‘should I turn left or right?’
“360 million data records are analysed in a matter of seconds and then relayed back to taxi drivers in real time,” shares Puthucode. “This proves that it is possible to transmit, process, and transmit back in a sub-second situation - using technology that is available today.”
Use Case #2: Fire & Emergency Management in NSW
Fire & Rescue NSW already had a platform to manage their operations - but they wanted to build a real time scenario planning capability. This needed to leverage vast amounts of historic data on fire and rescue operations, as well as firemen, volunteers, vehicles, property, environmental data.
Use Case #3: Fraud Detection
SAP has worked with one agency to manage fraud. By combining sets of data from different agencies, they have been able to predicting and then detect fraud. More accurate prediction has actually saved -A$27.5 million.
“The ability to combine data has been around for a while. But the ability to combine huge volumes of data, put it into different models, and then recalculating - this is new,” he notes. “What used to take seven people in seven weeks of work, now takes 25 minutes. So analysis that you never had time for, can now be tested, validated and improved. Now this agency can go after 450 cases - . This is at no incremental cost to the community. You’re netting A$ 27.5 million - by matching data, that otherwise wouldn’t have been possible”
These three use cases highlight the impact of data-based decisions - but Puthucode notes that there are three key hurdles that public sector organisations need to overcome in order to achieve real results.
Obstacle #1: Data Quality
When it comes to realising the benefits of Big Data it is important that the perfect is not allowed to be the enemy of the good.
“It is a risk to put out data that isn’t 100 per cent clean. There is a risk of reputation loss, so you need to have some level of quality assurance,” Puthucode accepts. “But you’ve also got to start somewhere. By the time you clean all of your data, the data becomes obsolete.”
“Cleaning data can be automated with data management, data cleansing and data curation tools. This enables you to start deploying data for useful applications - applications that have lasting impact. Once you start creating use cases for data - it’s amazing to see how this in turn creates a cycle of demand for additional clean data.”
Puthucode suggest that when this demand for both more, and more usable, data becomes established it is then much easier to create a culture where data is viewed as an asset. The next stage in data maturity is to view this asset as being community-owned.
Civil servants know that the answers to all the problems don’t lie within government. Data is now permeating across departments, across public/private boundaries, and across national borders. NGOs are key partners for government in solving many persistent social challenges, and government departments around the region are increasingly involved in Open Data initiatives. “Of course it needs to be done in a transparent way, but I think Open Data is the way to go because the community has the resources and commitment to do this job better,” he says. “It used to be thought that government had the sole responsibility to clean its data, but it doesn’t.”
Obstacle #2: Privacy
“Data privacy is a real issue. Legislative guidelines prevent sharing of data for good reasons,” he says. “Rather than seeking permission to access new data, organisations should use existing data that is already shared as a starting point. There will be many instances where data is being shared - but it is not yet automated.”
Another way to see quick results is to harness information that has already been put in the public domain. “Citizens do not care about which department provides a service - they just want an outcome. It is down to the government to provide a single view of itself to the citizen - and this is something which necessitates sharing and collaboration,” he continues. Puthucode accepts that you need vision and executive sponsorship for people to buy in to this vision to share data, along with protection measures.
“Of course it is challenging, but as you progress many initial objections fall away,” he explains. “As the benefits of sharing data are realised, the trade-off between risk and reward becomes an easier calculation to make. It creates the momentum for organisations to depend less on guesswork and more on facts.”
Obstacle #3: Big Data
Management Data has never been so easy to create and replicate - and government and civil society have both contributed to an explosion of data. But processing all this Big Data has been hard.
As more government services and basic processes are automated - such as registration of vehicles, employment data, housing data - there has been a massive growth in structured data. Yet there has been even faster growth in unstructured data: such as social media, videos, and user generated content.
SAP HANA is a Big Data platform that is able to handle complex query processing and high transaction rates simultaneously. This provides the ability to acquire and process large volumes of structured and unstructured data, and put them into new models.
"There is both a strong hunger for useful information, and a huge amount of information. But you need to be able to filter it and make it relevant to the user,” says Puthucode. “This is where mobile technology, with a user friendly interface, comes in to play.”
“The city of Boston deployed SAP’s mobile dashboard application which has proven to be a tremendous hit for city workers and other stakeholders,” he shares. “Boston used different sources of data such as the condition of property, crime data, debt history of residents in order to answer the question ‘what properties are at risk of crime?’ By making the platform user friendly and mobile, city authorities were able to tweak their programmes and deliver a very precise response to situations.”
“I am very motivated to help governments overcome the challenges and respond to the opportunities of Big Data,” Puthucode adds by way of summary. “I think that SAP’s ability to process Big Data, integrate it into day-to-day operational decision making, really enables government organisations to move to a new era of anticipatory government. When the facts confronting government decision makers change, you need a platform that lets you know in real time.”
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About Vivek Puthucode, General Manager - Public Services & Healthcare SAP Asia Pacific Japan
Vivek Puthucode is the Head of Public Services business for SAP Asia Pacific Japan responsible for all aspects of the business driving SAP’s strategy, market enablement and customer advocacy. Vivek’s focus areas are Public Administration, Health, Higher Education, Postal Services and Defence. Vivek leads a team provides end to end support to customers across Government & Healthcare sector in the region.
As a member of the Global Leadership team for Public Services and Healthcare, Vivek represents the APJ customers and partners in the development of products and services relevant to the region by bringing in the regional industry perspective to the SAP global products and solution portfolio planning process.
Vivek has more than 18 years’ experience in delivering ICT projects and programs to Public Sector agencies particularly in Australia and New Zealand Government. Vivek has advised a number of Government agencies such as Finance, Transport, Education and Human Services in implementation of transformation programs enabled by ICT. Vivek has developed a number of thought leadership papers and presentations that have been delivered to Industry and User group forums, media and think-tanks.
Prior to joining SAP, Vivek held leadership roles with leading Consulting organisations developing their Public Services consulting capability in State and Federal sector. Vivek has served as a member of various steering committees and project governance boards to advise and guide ICT program implementations in government agencies. Vivek is a member of the Institute of Public Administration in Australia and a member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): James Smith
Quelle/Source: futureGov, 20.01.2015
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