Big Data Strategies for Government, Society and Policy-Making

The paper aims to facilitate a discussion around how big data technologies and data from citizens can be used to help public administration, society, and policy-making to improve community's lives. This paper discusses opportunities and challenges of big data strategies for government, society, and policy-making. It employs the presentation of numerous practical examples from different parts of the world, where public-service delivery has seen transformation and where initiatives have been taken forward that have revolutionized the way governments at different levels engage with the citizens, and how governments and civil society have adopted evidence-driven policy-making through innovative and efficient use of big data analytics. The examples include the governments of the United States, China, the United Kingdom, and India, and different levels of government agencies in the public services of fraud detection, financial market analysis, healthcare and public health, government oversight, education, crime fighting, environmental protection, energy exploration, agriculture, weather forecasting, and ecosystem management. The examples also include smart cities in Korea, China, Japan, India, Canada, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the European Union. This paper makes some recommendations about how big data strategies transform the government and public services to become more citizen-centric, responsive, accountable and transparent.