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AASXXX10.1177/0095399714555751Administration & SocietyDesouza and Jacob
Article
Administration & Society
2017, Vol. 49(7) 10431064
Big Data in the Public The Author(s) 2014
DOI: 10.1177/0095399714555751
Sector: Lessons for journals.sagepub.com/home/aas
Practitioners and
Scholars
Abstract
In this essay, we consider the role of Big Data in the public sector. Motivating
our work is the recognition that Big Data is still in its infancy and many
important questions regarding the true value of Big Data remain unanswered.
The question we consider is as follows: What are the limits, or potential, of
Big Data in the public sector? By reviewing the literature and summarizing
insights from a series of interviews from public sector Chief Information
Officers (CIOs), we offer a scholarly foundation for both practitioners and
researchers interested in understanding Big Data in the public sector.
Keywords
big data, public organizations, public management, policy analysis
The amount of data in our world has been exploding, and analyzing large
datasetsso-called Big Datawill become a key basis of competition,
underpinning new waves of productivity growth, innovation, and consumer
surplus.
McKinsey Global Institute (2010)
Corresponding Author:
Kevin C. Desouza, Arizona State University, 411 N. Central Ave., M/C 3520, Suite #750,
Phoenix, AZ 85004-0685, USA.
Email: kev.desouza@gmail.com
1044 Administration & Society 49(7)
The era of Big Data has begun. Computer scientists, physicists, economists,
mathematicians, political scientists, bit-informaticists, sociologists, and many
others are clamoring for access to the massive quantities of information
produced by and about people, things and their interactions.
Dr. John Holdren (2012; Director of the White House Office of Science and
Technology Policy)
Introduction
As suggested in the introductory quotes, there is an increasingly popular per-
ception that Big Data holds vast potential for improving the decision-making
processes of both public and private organizations. In the hopes of solving
previously intractable problems, scholars, analysts, and entrepreneurs, from a
wide range of fields, are actively pursuing novel approaches to mining the
digital traces and deposit data that comprise Big Data (Boyd & Crawford,
2012). Against this emerging backdrop, policymakers, public managers, and
citizens have started to consider the ways in which Big Data can be used to
improve public sector outcomes, that is, public policies, programs, and dem-
ocratic processes.
Several Big Data initiatives have recently emerged in the public sector.
For example, in March of 2012, the Obama Administration put forward the
Big Data Research and Development Initiative. The objective of this initia-
tive was to understand the technologies needed to manipulate and mine mas-
sive amounts of information; apply that knowledge to other scientific fields
as well as address the national goals in the areas of health energy defense,
education and research (Mervis, 2012, p. 22). Big Data efforts have also
been initiated at other levels of government. For example, a host of munici-
palities have created open data platforms and held civic hackathons to
engage citizens with public data. Several novel applications have emerged
from these efforts addressing a wide range of local issues such as providing
information on blighted properties, identifying local resources for under-
served citizens, and helping parents access information on local schools.1
Simply stated, it appears that Big Data can, indeed, provide the public sec-
tor with a powerful arsenal of strategies and techniques for boosting produc-
tivity and achieving higher levels of efficiency and effectiveness (Manyika
et al., 2011, p. 54). That said, Big Data is still in its infancy and many impor-
tant questions regarding the true value of Big Data remain unanswered (Boyd
Desouza and Jacob 1045
& Crawford, 2012; Desouza, 2014). Indeed, observers have noted that Big
Data solutions are being promoted as a way to address public issues but, with
little consideration of how, where, and when it is most likely to be success-
ful.2 Thus, it appears that there is, at least some, tension between the promise
of Big Data and the reality.3 The question at hand then is, What are the lim-
its, or potential, of Big Data in the public sector?
In this article, we begin to address this question by reviewing the nascent
Big Data literature as it pertains to the management of public organizations.
The insights we draw are further informed by findings from a recent survey
of Chief Information Officers (CIOs) in different public organizations.4 As
such, we provide a scholarly foundation for both practitioners and research-
ers interested in understanding Big Data in the public sector.
Following this introduction, our article is organized into five sections. The
next four sections summarize key themes from the Big Data literature and
consider the implications of each for public organizations; in particular, the
bounds of Big Data, governance and privacy, decision-making, and the end
of theory. The final section offers a short summary of lessons for practitio-
ners and some thoughts on potential research directions for scholars.
Big Data is just too big for us. Where . . . big data begin[s] and end[s] is not
known. I have been struggling to identify digestible bites for us to take to move
on big data . . ..
First, at its core, Big Data must clearly be big. Big Data datasets are
beyond the ability of typical database software tools to capture, store, man-
age and analyze (Franks, 2012, p. 4).6 Thus, Big Data, in terms of volume,
is a function of the underlying and pre-existing capacity of an organization to
collect, store, and analyze its data. This definition suggests that Big Data is,
in terms of volume, a moving target. For example, household demographics
that were once difficult to manage now fit on a thumb drive and can be ana-
lyzed by a low-end laptop (Franks, 2012, p. 24).7
1046 Administration & Society 49(7)
The second defining characteristic of Big Data is its velocity. This refers
to the speed at which data are being created and stored, and their associated
rates of retrieval (Kaisler, Armour, Espinosa, & Money, 2013). Much like the
volume of data, however, there is no established benchmark by which to con-
sider when data velocity meets a Big Data threshold. Rather, the salient issue
is that the data are being created at historically fast rates. An example of the
current velocity of data is provided by Mayer-Schonberger and Cukier
(2013):
Google processes more than 24 petabytes of data per day, a volume that is
thousands of times the quantity of all printed material in the U.S. Library of
Congress. Facebook, a company that didnt exist a decade ago, gets more than
10 million new photos uploaded every hour. Facebook members click a like
button or leave a comment nearly three billion times a day, creating a digital
trail that the company can mine to learn about users preferences. Meanwhile,
the 800 million monthly users of Googles YouTube service upload over an
hour of video every second. The number of messages on Twitter grows at
around 200 percent a year and by 2012 exceeded 400 million tweets a day.
(p. 8)
A third defining characteristic of Big Data is its variety. Big Data is com-
prised of data in a wide range of forms, including text, images, and videos.
Generally speaking, then, it will include data that are structured, semi-struc-
tured, or unstructured. Structured data refer to data that have an organized
structure and are, thus, clearly identifiable. A simple example would be a
database with specific information that is stored in columns and rows. Semi-
structured data do not conform to a formal structure per se; however, it con-
tains tags that help separate the data records or fields. For example, data in
many bibliographical software programs reflect semi-structured data. That is,
the file is composed of records, but the structure is not regular in the sense
that fields may be missing or be comprised of more open formats, such as
a Notes section. Finally, unstructured data, as its name implies, have no
identifiable structure. Examples of unstructured data, then, include the fol-
lowing: text messages, photos, videos, and audio files.
As datasets become increasingly complexfrom structured to unstruc-
turedthe processing and analytical capabilities required to collect, manage,
and analyze the data increases significantly. Thus, a better understanding of
the defining characteristics of an organizations real, or potential, data reposi-
tories offers insights into the level and types of investments needed.
The final defining characteristic of Big Data is its complexitythe degree
to which the data are interconnected. Many of the novel applications and/or
insights that have emerged from Big Data applications are a result of
Desouza and Jacob 1047
Low volume High volume High volume High volume High volume
Low velocity Low velocity High velocity High velocity High velocity
Low variety Low variety Low variety High variety High variety
Low complexity Low complexity Low complexity Low complexity High complexity
than their bigger data counterparts. More precisely, at the low-end of the
data spectrumby definitionthe organization is unlikely to have a great
deal of data to begin with (low volume and low velocity). Moreover, relevant
data are unlikely to be accessible through complementary organizations (low
complexity). Such an environment is not unusual for contemporary public
organizations. First, many public organizations have yet to adoptfor good
reasonsdata-based decision processes. In addition, the nature of many pub-
lic programs does not lend them to the creation/collection of reliable data. In
this context, the issue at hand will be to first determine what data, if any, will
improve programmatic outcomes. To the degree that outcomes could be
improved, the primary investment will be to increase the volume and velocity
of data. That is, to generate appropriate data (increased volume) and then to
ensure that the data are collected in an ongoing fashion (increased velocity).
In contrast to small data organizations, many public organizations have
spent a great deal of time generating, collecting, and storing data. These pub-
lic organizations are likely to be characterized by higher volumes of data,
often spread across multiple departments. In these contexts, the primary
question will be as follows: How can existing data resources be better
employed to improve programmatic outcomes? For example, one high visi-
bility Big Data application in the public sector is the Office of Policy and
Strategic Planning in the Office of the Mayor of New York City. This office
employs a small group of analysts that mine data from approximately 60 dif-
ferent city agencies to address a host of issues, including building and devel-
opment issues, infrastructure problems, the selling of bootleg cigarettes, and
the flipping of business licenses (Howard, 2012). This office connects,
and then mines, a host of existing datasets from different agencies within
the city. Simply stated, this office leverages existing analytical capabilities by
bringing together otherwise unconnected datasets to find correlations that
help them refocus their programmatic efforts in more efficient ways. A tan-
gible example offers some additional clarity.
Every year, New York City receives approximately 20,000 complaints for
illegal conversions. That is, where an apartment or house is zoned to
accommodate a certain number of people but is accommodating many more.
Given the potential safety problems associated with this issue, it is critical
that the City be able to identify illegal conversions before a problem arises.
Historically, the only way to address this problem was to investigate com-
plaints. Such a process is idiosyncratic at best; with only about 200 inspectors
to address the complaints, the City had been unable to get ahead of the
problem. By compiling a wide range of information such as property tax,
building structure, and age of the building, the data analytics team found a
curious correlation between illegal conversions and a particular building
Desouza and Jacob 1049
We need to focus on analyzing the data we currently have stored [in our
systems]. My guess is that we only analyze about 30% of it . . . there is a huge
opportunity for us to work on the rest [of the data] and create value . . ..
Finally, at one end of the Big Data spectrum are those organizations that
use data that are characterized by high volume, velocity, variety, and com-
plexity. While there are, likely, few examples of truly Big Data in the pub-
lic sector there are some. For example, the Los Angeles Police Departments
Real-Time Analysis and Critical Response Division, in collaboration with
researchers from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), uses both
historical and real-time data (that includes live feeds of city and traffic cam-
eras), to predict where future crime might occur. This division provides
real time investigative information to officers and detectives throughout the
city and region.12 These data allow the Los Angeles Police Department
(LAPD) to concentrate resources in geographically defined areas. The data
used in this case provide a rare, but important, example of how Big Data
high volume, velocity, variety, and complexitycan support public efforts.
The issue at hand, however, is investment and management issues involved
with this type of data are different from the issues when dealing with smaller
types of data. In particular, to recognize data in its unstructured form and then
to understand how to connect it to more conventional forms of data. In this
particular case, the LAPD had to first recognize that live feeds and video-
streams are best thought of as dataand that these data could be con-
nected, through geocoding, to other data.
This discussion, of the characteristics of data, suggests insights for both
practitioners and scholars. First, the primary insight is that large efficiencies
can be achieved through analytics by simply recognizing the type of data that
1050 Administration & Society 49(7)
do, or are likely to, characterize an organization. Indeed, many CIOs have
already recognized the importance of appreciating their organizations exist-
ing data resources. This ideathat public investments for data should begin
with an assessment of existing data reservoirssuggests a first step for
scholarship on Big Data in the public sector. More precisely, an important
first step in this research agenda should be to survey and assess the types of
data that public organizations are collecting. This simple, albeit difficult, task
would provide the foundation to consider several important questions. For
example, what are the characteristics of organizations that are most likely to
have and benefit from Big Data? What types of organizations are mostly
characterized by small data? And, are different types of data being used to
support different types of decision processes?
A second insight to draw from this discussion, particularly when consider-
ing organizations that have more than small data, is that maximizing the
analytical power of existing data will likely require that it be considered in
relation to data in other parts of the organization. Increasing the data com-
plexity in this wayby connecting across departmentsposes unique chal-
lenges. This issue of collaboration, and its importance, is further developed in
the next section on governance and privacy.
technologies can engage citizens in novel ways and, thus, improve the aggre-
gation and revelation of citizen preferences, with respect to public policies.
In a democratically governed society, a requisite objective of the govern-
ment is to ensure that their policiesand the subsequent provision of public
goods and servicesreflect the preferences of its citizens. A well-established
finding in political economy, however, is thatbecause of the heterogeneity
of preferences found in large groupsthe provision of collective goods will
always be suboptimal; society will be provided with a level of public goods
that does not account for the heterogeneous preferences of citizens (see, for
example, Alesina, Baqir, & Easterly, 1999; Olson, 1965; Samuelson, 1954).
One explanation for this problem is the inability of traditional democratic
mechanisms to adequately aggregate preferences (Arrow, 1950). That is, the
outcomes of traditional voting mechanismsmajority voting and representa-
tive democracydo not necessarily lead to preferred outcomes.15 In this con-
text, policy outcomes are highly reliant on information offered by
policy-experts and/or agenda-setters. Neither of which, necessarily, represent
the will of the people. An important component of the argument for Big
Data applications in the public sector is the promise that it can solve this
problem. That is, it can provide information about the preferences of citizens
regarding public policies without relying on policy-experts. Big data propo-
nents point to two different applications that will allow policymakers to
undertake better assessments of the will of the people: prediction markets
and sentiment analysis. From an investment point of view, these efforts
require new forms of datawhereas the previous examples we have dis-
cussed leveraging existing data through novel analytics. Thus, the level of
investment is likely greater, or at the very least quite different, than other
forms of Big Data investment. Despite some of the enthusiasm around the
potential for Big Data in the policy process, a close reading of the literature
suggests to us that the Big Data mechanisms proposed to improve public
policiesparticularly prediction markets and sentiment analysisface
important limitations.
First, scholars and practitioners have considered how Big Data can take
advantage of the wisdom of crowdsthrough prediction marketsto pre-
dict potential outcomes. These markets, also known as information mar-
kets or event futures, are markets where participants trade contracts
whose payoff depends on unknown future events (Wolfers & Zitzewitz,
2006). In traditional markets, the equilibrium outcome reflects the market
price. In prediction markets, the equilibrium outcome reflects the markets
expectation of an outcome. For example, if a contract pays US$1 if an
event occurs (and nothing otherwise) and the contract last trades at 30 cents,
then the markets expectation of that event occurring is 0.30. Thus, prediction
1054 Administration & Society 49(7)
how citizens are responding to proposed changes to legislation. This can take
different forms. For example, analysts could assess real-time data that
emerge during a policy speech or they could consider archived citizen
responses over the evolution of a particular piece of legislation. Either way,
sentiment analysis for public policy draws on the increasing acceptance of
social media as a platform for real-time public communication. For exam-
ple, a group of researchers at Northeastern University and Harvard have
established a project titled Pulse of a Nation, which uses twitter data to assess
the mood throughout each day.19 Another example is the United Nations
(UN) Global Pulse initiative in collaboration with Crimson Hexagon (a social
media analysis and analytics platform developed at Harvard University). This
effort launched a research project to analyze tweets to understand the senti-
ments, choices, and socioeconomic conditions of people (Lopez & Amand,
2012). These data could be used to correlate changes in sentiment related to
specific policies. As such, sentiment analysis particularly when undertaken
using Big Data (such as twitter) can offer a unique understanding of the
degree to which citizen preferences have been met, or are likely to be met,
through public policies and programs.
Not surprisingly, some of these limitations reflect existing limitations in
the democratic process, such as engaging otherwise marginalized groups,
limiting the influence of potentially biased agenda-setters, and validating the
sources of information. More precisely, drawing on existing critiques of
social media data in science and research, we point to three key limitations of
this application in the public sectorthe unequal distribution of real-time
data, deliberate data manipulation by key stakeholders, and the unlikely abil-
ity to engage citizens in policy matters.
First, real-time data, such as Twitter, are not necessarily representative of the
population. Moreover, Twitter accounts and users are not equivalent. This
idea and its importance are clearly articulated by Boyd and Crawford (2012):
Some users have multiple accounts. Some accounts are used by multiple
people. Some people never establish an account, and simply access Twitter
using the web. Some accounts are bots that produce automated content
without involving a person. Furthermore, the notion of an active account is
problematic. While some users post content frequently through Twitter, other
participate as listeners . . . Due to uncertainties about what an account
represents and what engagement looks like, it is standing on precarious ground
to sample Twitter and make claims about people and users. (p. 6)
This is a tool where massive amounts of data and applied mathematics replace
every other tool that might be brought to bear. Out with every theory of human
behavior from linguistics to sociology. Forget taxonomy, ontology, and
psychology. Who knows why people do what they do? The point is that they do
it, and we can track and measure it with unprecedented fidelity. With enough
data, the numbers speak for themselves.
That said, simple correlations may not serve the longer-term goals of
public organizations. More precisely, because of the wicked nature of the
problems that characterize the work of public sector organizations, it seems
that correlations may be necessary but certainly not sufficient.
Wicked problems are defined by uncertainty. The problems themselves
are often ill-defined, and the solution-set is often ambiguous. Moreover,
many of the solutions or programmatic options involve important tradeoffs.
1058 Administration & Society 49(7)
they do not to lose sight of the broader issues the public sector needs to
address.
Consider this case: The city of Boston introduced Street Bump app,
which automatically detects potholes and sends reports to city administrators.
As residents drive, this app collects data on smoothness of ride, which could
potentially aid in planning investments to fix roads in the city. However, after
the launch of the app, it was found that the program directed crews to wealthy
neighborhoods because people were more likely to have access to smart-
phones (Rampton, 2014). This example illustrates that public agencies can-
not simply leverage technologies to address urban challenges; they need to
think through several dimensions. Who are the users of the application? Is it
representative of all sections of society? Also, data ownership becomes a cru-
cial issue. Who owns the data? How can people be used as sensors without
violating their privacy? Incidents like these will affect cities resilience and
livability.
While this is an important stream of the Big Data literature, the idea of
true causal relationships seems far from the mind of public sector CIOs.
Indeed, the interview data suggest that public organizations are simply so
early in their data efforts that they have not been able to consider the full
potential of Big Data analytics. As noted in Desouzas (2014) report:
CIOs overwhelmingly report that they are just getting started with big data
efforts. While big data as a concept has been discussed in the popular press and
the academic literature for years, public agencies have not yet fully embraced
the concept.
For scholars, this suggests an opportunity to examine and assess the analyti-
cal approaches currently being used by public agencies. In doing so, we can
better understand the causal connections between data, policy, public pro-
grams, and the social issues they are supposed to address.
Conclusion
We were motivated to write this article by what we saw as a dearth of scholar-
ship on Big Data in the public sector. That is, the extant literature offers few,
explicit insights about the limits and potential of Big Data in the public sec-
tor. Thus, drawing on the broad literature on Big Data, as well as data from
interviews with public sector CIOs, we identified some important bounds
to the potential for Big Data. Throughout the article, we offered lessons for
practitioners with respect to developing a Big Data program. That said, we
also hinted at some ways that scholars can support Big Data programs in the
1060 Administration & Society 49(7)
public sector. The primary insight we offer for scholars, however, is that there
is roomindeed the needfor the development of a systematic research
agenda. In this concluding section, we highlight the components of this pro-
posed research agenda.
First, what types of data characterize public organizations? This question
could lead to an important typology of public organizations and how they are,
or could, use different types of data. Second, how are public officials over-
coming the issues of privacy associated with the data-sharing that is funda-
mental to Big Data programs. Third, given the nascent nature of Big Data in
the public sector, most of the related efforts have been targeted at improving
the low-lying fruit found at the programmatic level. That said, some recent
scholarship suggests that the true value of Big Data lies in its ability to
enhance public policy-making more generally. This literature is unsettled, at
best, and subsequently, there is a great deal of work that should explore (a)
the degree to which this is true (i.e., Can Big Data enhance public policy-
making?) and (b) what public policy domains are best suited for Big Data
analytics? Finally, we described a growing body of work that pushes
against the Big Data narrativethat analytics need to focus exclusively, or at
least primarily, on correlations. Scholars and analysts writing in this area
have noted that an emphasis on correlations comes at the expense of under-
standing the underlying causal relationships. In some organizational con-
texts, this might be a trivial omission. In the public sector, however, where
many of the problems being addressed are wicked in nature, understanding
the causal connection between factors is critical for developing policies and
programs that address the longer-term components of the problem. From the
point of view of future research, we argue that scholars should look closely at
how data are currently being used and assess the degree to which it is being
underutilized.
Big data offers the potential to address many public sector problems.
There is, however, some tension between the promise of Big Data and reality.
In this article, we have looked at the extant literature for lessons that will sup-
port public officials in their efforts to leverage Big Data. That said, for the
potential of Big Data to be realized we argue that scholars have an important
role to play. With this in mind, we have also set forth the beginnings of a
research agenda that considers the limits and potential of Big Data in the
public sector.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article: Kevin C. Desouza graterfully acknowl-
edges funding received from the IBM Center for the Business of Government.
Notes
1. See Code for America website (http://codeforamerica.org/) for more information
on these types of apps. That said, we will demonstrate that these types of open
data exercises are, in most instances, not truly representative of Big Data. They
are novel and interesting, but not Big Data.
2. As described in a recent article in the Atlantic Cities: We are hearing from the
mayors office like, a cat got stuck in a tree, can we have a hackathon to get it
down? (Badger, 2013).
3. Most recently, in a series of articles in The New York Times, Paul Krugman
and James Glanz offer competing views on the potential benefits of Big Data
for economic productivity (see http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/
the-dynamo-and-big-data/?_r=0).
4. The full findings from the study are reported in Desouza (2014).
5. The list of characteristics seems to be growing. The 3Vs were popularized in
Laney (2001).
6. This of course suggests that, as storage becomes cheaper, and analytical tools
become more powerful, Big Data defined purely in terms of volumewill be
a moving target (Manyika et al., 2011).
7. For more insights on the volume of data being created, see Bohn and Short
(2010); Bohn, Short, and Baru (2011); and Shapiro and Varian (1998).
8. A recent study has revealed that the Google team has been overestimating flu
outbreaks since 2011their prediction is two points off compared with the
Center for Disease Control (CDC) estimates. In addition, by using its traditional
methods of estimation, the CDC has been accurately predicting flu outbreaks
(Lazer, Kennedy, King, & Vespignani, 2014).
9. A similar framework has been put forward by Birnhack (2014).
10. For more details on this particular case, see Franks (2012).
11. These datasets are not big but just large. These datasets are still analyzed using
traditional analytical tools (e.g., SPSS, Excel) and hence do not meet the stan-
dard definition for Big Data.
12. www.lapdonline.org/home/pdf_view/39375
13. John Bryson has written (with a variety of coauthors) extensively on this issue,
particularly as it relates to the sharing of information and resources (see, for
example, Bryson, Ackermann, & Eden, 2007; Bryson, Crosby, & Stone, 2006).
14. Similar open data efforts have been initiated at the local level. For example, a
recent newsletter from Alliance for Innovation, titled The Digital Future: Open
Data to Open Doors highlights open data initiatives in Hawaii, Austin, Texas,
and Palo Alto, California.
1062 Administration & Society 49(7)
15. See almost any introductory text book on political economy. For a simple exposi-
tion of this issue, see Jonathon Grubers (2014) textbook.
16. See Wolfers and Zitzewitz (2006).
17. McGinnis refers to this as dispersed media.
18. For example, the City of Santa Monica was one of five US$1 million awards
granted by the Bloomberg Philanthropies Mayors Challenge. This effort is
focused on the development of a Local Well-Being Index, a dynamic mea-
surement tool that will provide a multidimensional picture of our communitys
strengths and challenges across key elements of well-being (economics, social
connections, health, education & care, community engagement, and physical
environment). The goal of this index is to be used by city officials to make
data-driven decisions and targeted resource allocation. http://www.smgov.net/
uploadedFiles/Wellbeing/Project-Summary.pdf
19. http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/amislove/twittermood/
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1064 Administration & Society 49(7)
Author Biographies
Kevin C. Desouza is the associate dean for research in the College of Public Programs,
a professor in the School of Public Affairs, and the interim director for the Decision
Theater in the Office of Knowledge Enterprise Development at Arizona State
University.
Benoy Jacob is the director of the Center for Local Government Research and
Training, and is an assistant professor in the School of Public Affairs at the University
of Colorado, Denver.