Feds go for Big Data

It’s called the “Big Data Research and Development Initiative” and it’s the latest move by the Federal Government to take advantage of the massive amounts of data being generated hourly by just about everybody around the world.

According to a press release issued by the President’s office,  “By improving our ability to extract knowledge and insights from large and complex collections of digital data, the initiative promises to help solve some the Nation’s most pressing challenges.”

What are those challenges?  Scientific discovery, environmental and biomedical research, education, and national security, according to Dr. John P. Holdren, Assistant to the President and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

To launch the initiative, six Federal departments and agencies (The National Science Foundation, The National Institutes of Health, the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, the U.S. Geological Survey, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) committed more than $200 million to developing tools and techniques needed to access, organize, and glean discoveries from huge volumes of digital data.

Among the initiative’s goals is to take advantage of cloud computing services provided by the private industry. That should reduce the number of federal data centers by roughly 40% by the year 2015, saving the federal government about $5 billion.

The irony of the Big Data initiative should not be lost on opponents of the old data mining act, which generated heated controversy in 2007. With the mountains of personal data now freely available (indeed, freely offered) in the Cloud, one wonders what all the hoopla was about. For privacy advocates, the battle seems all but lost.

For more info about each department’s or agency’s commitments to the Big Data initiative, go to:

NSF: http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=123607
HHS/NIH: http://www.nih.gov/news/health/mar2012/nhgri-29.htm
DOE: http://science.energy.gov/news/
DOD: www.DefenseInnovationMarketplace.mil
DARPA: http://www.darpa.mil/NewsEvents/Releases/2012/03/29.aspx
USGS: http://powellcenter.usgs.gov.