discuss the role of government in serving the masses using IT
Answers
Explanation:
Innovations have swept the government nomenclature over the past decade. Many government entities followed tried and tested private sector frameworks, and a lot of good outcomes were delivered in terms of better public policies and improved government services. However, the bulk of these innovations where encouraged inside-out, designed and delivered from within. In the meantime, the more interesting form of innovation was coming from outside government; namely the private sector, civil society and individual citizens. Empowered with more and more data, they started thinking truly out of the box and offering various “government hacks”.
Today, fast-moving and evolving trends in digital technologies are leading to a radical change in citizen expectations. Citizens are changing their approach to interacting with, and relating to, governmental organizations and services. The nature of these evolving interactions is horizontal, empowering and spontaneous. In many ways, the exact opposite of the traditional hierarchical, bureaucratic and rules-based systems government developed over the decades. Central to this new form of interaction is data: up-to-date, reliable, user-friendly and open data.
This need for data is quickly becoming a central theme that applies to all aspects of our evolving digital society. A case in point is the field of artificial intelligence, which promises to revolutionize society (governments included). Companies such as Google, Facebook and Microsoft are using AI-related techniques to train computers to recognize objects in photos and understand human language. It is possible to train computers to perform these difficult feats because we have the enormous quantities of data that is required. The same applies to all forms of machine learning, smart manufacturing and every other tech-driven trend shaping the future. They are all reliant on data, and are only as good as the data they crunch. In this context, data has been described as the “new oil”.
Governing in the age of data
The rapid pace of technology evolution over the past decades gave us new business models (at the centre of which is e-commerce), an unprecedented level of global connectivity (accelerated by the smartphone phenomenon). These developments created enormous volumes of data, which led to the rapid rise of the “data field”. What was once the domain of intelligence agencies, market research professionals and some technical statisticians is now going mainstream.
The new connected world of today is producing data at a pace that is unprecedented in human history. It is estimated that today more than 3 billion people are connected to the internet (compared to only 2.3 million people in 1990). These 3 billion people are producing data every second of their digital lives. This has led to the rise of big data, commonly defined using the four Vs: volume, variety (of sources), velocity (effectively around the clock) and veracity (given abundance, quality assurance becomes key).
If used effectively, big data can be a powerful tool. Various researchers have found a strong link between effective data management strategy and financial performance of companies as it helps them get to market faster with products and services that are better aligned with customer needs. It has the same performance enhancement potential for the public sector in terms of better policies, more tailored government services, and more effective and efficient distribution of resources. It can also lead to negative outcomes if used incorrectly, in addition to the much-discussed issue of privacy.
Effectively managing big data is now possible given the hardware and software developments, at the centre of which is the exponential growth storage capacity. Today, a hard disk with one terabyte storage capacity costs about $50 (that was the global storage capacity only four decades ago). It is because of this storage power that many entities are following the “collect now, sort out later” approach when it comes to data. The low cost of storage and better methods of analysis mean that you generally do not need to have a specific purpose for the data in mind before you collect it. This means big data will only get bigger, and – per IBM’s Watson data crunching service team – the value of this data will go up every day AI advances.
Answer:
Innovations have swept the government nomenclature over the past decade. Many government entities followed tried and tested private sector frameworks, and a lot of good outcomes were delivered in terms of better public policies and improved government services. However, the bulk of these innovations where encouraged inside-out, designed and delivered from within. In the meantime, the more interesting form of innovation was coming from outside government; namely the private sector, civil society and individual citizens. Empowered with more and more data, they started thinking truly out of the box and offering various “government hacks”.
Today, fast-moving and evolving trends in digital technologies are leading to a radical change in citizen expectations. Citizens are changing their approach to interacting with, and relating to, governmental organizations and services. The nature of these evolving interactions is horizontal, empowering and spontaneous. In many ways, the exact opposite of the traditional hierarchical, bureaucratic and rules-based systems government developed over the decades. Central to this new form of interaction is data: up-to-date, reliable, user-friendly and open data.
This need for data is quickly becoming a central theme that applies to all aspects of our evolving digital society. A case in point is the field of artificial intelligence, which promises to revolutionize society (governments included). Companies such as Google, Facebook and Microsoft are using AI-related techniques to train computers to recognize objects in photos and understand human language. It is possible to train computers to perform these difficult feats because we have the enormous quantities of data that is required. The same applies to all forms of machine learning, smart manufacturing and every other tech-driven trend shaping the future. They are all reliant on data, and are only as good as the data they crunch. In this context, data has been described as the “new oil”.