Big Data reigns only if we can rein in Big Brother
Fundamental change is occurring in the relationship between governments and the public. At the heart of this is the revolution in mobile communications, social technologies, and sensors that are connecting people, the internet and the physical world into one interconnected network.
As the recent anti-government demonstrations around the world have shown, social media has empowered ordinary citizens who use Facebook to schedule protests, Twitter to coordinate, and YouTube to tell the world.
Important insights can be gleaned by collecting, linking, and analysing vast amounts of previously disparate bits of information. It can help protect us from terrorist attacks, improve public health, reduce traffic congestion, support good governance, boost transparency and fight corruption. The Spanish police have been using twitter to fight crime. Officials post attention-grabbing messages to alert citizens to serious crimes and to track down suspects. @policia has half a million followers on Twitter and the information they gather helped them carry out at least 300 arrests on drug charges last year. And that is just the tip of the iceberg. Some Police forces have already started using the power of predictive analysis to sift through vast quantities of seemingly uncorrelated data to discern patterns to help reduce and prevent crime.
In their excellent book Big Data, Viktor Mayer- Schönberger and Kenneth Cukier write about the police in Richmond, Va., who track criminal incidents against a variety of events: corporate paydays, sports events, concerts, gun shows and dozens of other possible triggers. The computer identifies patterns. Two weeks after a gun show, for example, there is always a jump in violent crime. Multiply this example by thousands, and you understand what the NSA computers are doing.
Yet, these trends also raise questions about legitimacy, civil liberties, and regulation, particularly as this data – and the ability to analyse it – is widely diffused and not under the sole control of governments.
This poses a set of new challenges, including redefining what citizens expect and are willing to accept from their governments. It also raises opportunities for governments to rebuild confidence, provided that they are able to redesign their structures and processes. For governments to be effective, they will need to open up previously closed systems, for instance, by making demographic, statistical and expenditure data easily available to the public. It will also require them to work in new ways and with a whole new set of actors — from private companies, non-profit organisations, and individuals — in order to co-produce public value.
A number of cities have embraced technologies that use geographic data to facilitate civic engagement. One example is www.seeclickfix.com, a simple mobile application which provides the ability for the public to file non-emergency location-specific service requests such as fixing potholes or streetlights. Critical to its success though is the integration of public engagement tools with responsive and consistent service fulfillment (i.e. that the potholes and streetlights get fixed once reported). The response has been overwhelmingly positive in the 25,000 towns around the world where it has been rolled out. There are a number of similar initiatives. For instance, the UK-based, FixMyStreet.com, which features discussions between residents and government officials.
The need for change has never been so urgent. For governments to be successful in the future, they will need to know what they have to do themselves, when they will need to outsource and when they will need to work in partnerships. It is increasingly vital that they meet the public’s expectations and govern in the interests of, as opposed to over, their citizens.
