Big Data's $7.2B Opportunity
Now that sequestration has become old news, we can start talking about big data again. With federal agencies creating 40% more data annually, the need for solutions for how to analyze that data and make it more useful is huge, says Deltek analyst Alex Rossino. He moderated his firm's federal executive breakfast last week in Tysons.The big data market is expected to grow to $7.2 billion by 2017, driven bydemand for hardware, software, and services. (Wonder if cats will ever know the amount of data their presence on the internet causes?) HHS has the most big data projects already underway, followed by DOD, DOE, NSF, and VA.
Greg Elin, another fed exec breakfast speaker, is one of the few federal employees with the title "chief data officer." At FCC, he's tasked with solving the agency's big data problem, which isn't as massive as other agencies. Coordinating data across its databases is one of the biggest challenges. But the agency is starting to generate more sensor-based data like looking at broadband performance in homes across the country. FCC has also successfully built APIs so that the public can work with its data. His dream is to be able to answer any research-related question with a URL. Like if his boss asks for the latest stats on how many landlines still exist, he could send a link with the breakdown. (Our guess is that pretty soon the answer to that question will be zero.)
Mark Luker rounded out the panel with his take on big data, from the perspective of the associate director and chair of the big data steering committee under an organization the White House put together to oversee 14 agencies' investment in IT R&D. He says the urgency in getting big data analytics solutions for agencies could mean better forecasting for NOAA or richer clinical data for NIH. The health agency has said big data is the greatest bottleneck in medical research. Mark's steering committee is building a portal to find out which schools are teaching big data skillsets and offering prizes to the public for breakthrough solutions.
