The Proceedings of the 14th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research
Big Data and e-Government: Issues, Policies, and
Recommendations
John Carlo Bertot
University of Maryland College Park
College of Information Studies
College Park, MD 20742
301.405.3267
jbertot@umd.edu
ABSTRACT
The promises and potential of Big Data in transforming
digital government services, governments, and the
interaction between governments, citizens, and the business
sector, are substantial. From “smart” government to
transformational government, Big Data can foster
collaboration; create real-time solutions to challenges in
agriculture, health, transportation, and more; and usher in a
new era of policy- and decision-making. There are,
however, a range of policy challenges to address regarding
Big Data, including access and dissemination; digital asset
management, archiving and preservation; privacy; and
security. This paper selectively reviews and analyzes the
U.S. policy context regarding Big Data and offers
recommendations aimed at facilitating Big Data initiatives.
Categories and Subject Descriptors
H.4.2 [Information Systems Applications]: Type of
systems – e-government applications.
General Terms
Legal aspects, management, measurement, performance.
Keywords
Open government, Big Data.
Acknowledgment
This report was made possible through the generous
support of the Korea Institute of Science and Technology
Information (KISTI).
1. INTRODUCTION
Alvin Toffler coined the phrase “information overload” in
his 1970 book Future Shock. In this book, Toffler
introduced the idea that too much information can lead to
challenges in making decisions [20]. In today’s context,
however, we are faced with a deluge of data that, when
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1
Heeyoon Choi
Korea Institute for Science & Technology
Information(KISTI)
Seoul, Korea
82.10.4780.2933
hychoi@kisti.re.kr
combined with new technologies and analysis techniques,
has the potential to inform decision and policy making in
unprecedented ways. Increasingly, the research and
scientific communities, governments, and the private sector
are generating large-scale data sets on a range of topics,
including climate change, traffic patterns, health and
disease data, purchasing behavior, and social behavior
through social media interactions. As noted in their 2010
report, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and
Technology indicated that network and information
technologies (NIT) are [6, p. vii-viii]: “Key drivers of
economic competitiveness; crucial to achieving our major
national and global priorities in energy and transportation,
education and life-long learning, healthcare, and national
and homeland security; able to accelerate the pace of
discovery in nearly all other fields; and essential to
achieving the goals of open government.”
A foundational component to the successful attainment of
the NIT aspirations is Big Data. The integration of large-
scale data sets with emerging NIT technologies and
visualization techniques can extract knowledge and insights
to resolve some of the world’s most difficult challenges. In
short, our ability to harness Big Data have the potential to
reduce information overload, lead to new scientific and
research insights, create economic development, and
generate new policies that benefit the publics served by
governments.
1.1 The Promise of Big Data
There are increasing examples of Big Data initiatives that
offer views of the promise of Big Data-driven application
and research. These include:
 A partnership between Inrix, Inc. and the New Jersey
Department of Transportation (NJDOT). By
harvesting signals and data from GPS units in vehicles
and cell phones, Inrix collects data about car speed
along key roads. In doing so, Inrix can alert the
NJDOT in real time of any incidents along any of the
major roads, while simultaneously alerting drivers of
these incidents by sending traffic alert signals to their
GPS units or smartphones [16].
 The Climate Corporation is a weather insurance
company that provides policies to make up the
difference between federal crop insurance and farmer
losses due to weather. Its vast sensor network analyzes
and predicts temperature, precipitation, soil moisture,
and yields for 20 million U.S. farm fields. By knowing
 The Proceedings of the 14th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research
the number of heat stress days, as well as soil moisture
content, the models developed by the Climate
Corporation can help determine the amount of weather
insurance farmers need, and payouts that they would
need to make [21].
 The New York State Energy Research and
Development Authority (NYSERDA) used a range of
Big Data techniques to assess implications of climate
change on the state of New York, and to provide
strategies to deal with climate change in areas such as
agriculture, public health, energy, and transportation.
This has been expanded by the U.S. Centers for
Disease Control, who is working with 10 states and
cities through its Read States & Cities Initiative
(http://www.cdc.gov/climateandhealth/climate_ready.
htm) to study and responses to climate change, for
which Big Data are an underlying key component.
These serve as some examples of Big Data use across a
range of sectors – and also serve to highlight the potential
benefits of Big Data initiatives.
This paper reviews and discusses key issues and policies
within the United States regarding Big Data. In particular,
the paper focuses on government interaction and
involvement with Big Data, and concludes
recommendations for Big Data initiatives based on the
lessons learned from the U.S. experience.
2. METHODOLOGY
The authors engaged in exploratory research that included:
1) Policy analysis of existing U.S. information policies,
laws, and initiatives that govern the availability and use of
Big Data by government agencies; 2) A literature review of
Big Data initiatives in the U.S.; and 3) Interviews with civil
society groups and data activists in the in the U.S. In all,
interviews were conducted with five different open
government representatives in communities that focus on
environmental, health, budget, and overall access to
government information and transparency. The interviews,
which occurred between December 2012 and the end of
January 2013, were informed by the initial policy analysis
and literature review findings by the authors.
The research questions that guided the research were: 1)
How are U.S. federal government agencies defining Big
Data? 2) What approaches to Big Data are government
agencies taking, particularly in terms of data release,
availability, use, and collaborations? 3) To what extent
does the U.S. information policy environment support,
contend with, promote, or hinder Big Data initiatives? 4)
What policy initiatives, changes, and/or guidance are
necessary to overcome the challenges and attain the
promise of Big Data? This is a growing space for research,
practice, and policy development and, as an exploratory
study, this effort serves as a limited and initial review that
will require additional study.
3. A BRIEF HISTORY AND DEFINING
BIG DATA
In general, we can define Big Data as vast datasets that
cannot be analyzed using conventional software and
2
analytic tools [17, 21]. Moreover, Big Data have the
following characteristics: 1) They require significant
processing power (such as via a supercomputer); 2) They
span a range of data types such as text, numeric, image,
video; and 3) They can cross multiple data platforms such
as from social media networks, web log files, sensors,
location data from smart phones, digitized documents, and
photograph and video archives. Big Data are increasingly
measured in terabytes, are created through collaborative
efforts, and require increased computing power and new
analytic tools.
The notion of Big Data in the United States, particularly
government data, is not new. Whether in print or electronic
form, the U.S. government has collected and released a
wide range of data, publications, and content in the name of
transparency and openness. Indeed, a core principle of the
founding of the U.S. is access to and dissemination of
information about government [7]. Over the years,
government information and data have evolved, and so too
have the methodologies and approaches to collecting and
disseminating government data. Some milestones in the
U.S. include:
 The use of punch cards and an early version of
computing technology to tabulate the 1890 census data
(https://www.census.gov/history/www/through_the_de
cades/overview/1890.html).
 The launching of Social Security as part of the Social
Security Act in 1935, which required a large-scale
data collection effort to collect data from 26 million
workers and 3 million employers. IBM received the
contract to undertake this initiative
(http://www.ssa.gov/history/briefhistory3.html).
 Cox and Ellsworth [4], both NASA researchers, coin
the term “big data” in reference large scale datasets
regarding simulations of airflow around aircraft –
datasets that were large and difficult to analyze and
process due to computing technology limitations.
 In 2010, the Obama Administration launched data.gov
as part of its open government initiative to make
available “high value” datasets to the public
(http://www.data.gov/about).
Thus, one can trace the evolution of Big Data for over 100
years in the U.S. What is new, however, is the overall
approach and philosophy governing Big Data.
4. DATA PHILOSOPHY
A government’s philosophy towards releasing,
disseminating, and fostering the use of government data is
often embedded in a policy framework and initiative. In the
U.S., Big Data is embedded within the Obama
Administration’s Open Government Directive (OGD). On
his first day in office, President Obama committed his
administration to an “unprecedented level of openness in
Government” by adopting three guiding principles of
openness [12]: 1) Transparency: Agencies should treat
information as a national asset and empower the public
with the information needed to hold the government
accountable; 2) Participation: Agencies should inform and
improve government decision-making by tapping into the
citizenry’s collective expertise through proactive
engagement; and 3) Collaboration: Agencies should
 The Proceedings of the 14th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research

cooperate among themselves and with nonprofits,
businesses, academia, and the public to better accomplish
the work of the government.
The Administration operationalized its Open Government
Initiative with the release of the ambitious Open
Government Directive (OGD) [14]. The OGD sought to
deliver greater openness, transparency, and accountability –
but more significantly to provide a mechanism through
which to promote institutional transformation of which Big
Data are a key component.
The OGD was incorporated into the international scale
Open Government Partnership (OGP), which seeks to
encourage accountability, transparency, and transformation
of governments through, among other factors, Big Data
initiatives (http://www.opengovpartnership.org/). This open
data philosophy is foundational for Big Data to succeed, as
it ensures publicly accessible datasets through managed
processes.
5. DATA POLICIES
A key issue, however, regarding open government in
general and Big Data in particular, are the information and
data policies that govern the management, use, reuse, and
accessibility of government information and data. The U.S.
has a complex and evolving set of information policies
(laws, regulations, and memoranda) that govern the
information lifecycle – from the creation of information
through to its disposition and archiving. In addition, there
are a range of information policies that create a broader
access and dissemination framework. Table 1 identifies
some of the key policy areas and instruments, while the
ensuing sections discuss some of the key issues within the
policy structures that require consideration.
5.1 Privacy, Security, Accuracy, and
Archiving
Big Data raise a large number of information management
issues, primarily in the areas of privacy, security, accuracy,
and archiving, spanning major issues such as personally
identifiable information, security of government data and
information, and the accuracy of publicly available data. By
fostering collaborations and economic development
through private-public partnerships, government agencies
appear to be tacitly endorsing the privacy, security, and
other policies employed by those private sector entities.
OMB Memo M-04-04 (E-Authentication Guidance for
Federal Agencies) mandates that agencies decide the
appropriate levels of openness, moderation, authentication
and attribution, balancing access, identity authentication,
attribution, and concern for authoritative sourcing in the
level of moderation that is needed on an agency website.
To accomplish this, agencies must perform a standardized
risk assessment on all applications they put online.
Similarly, the Federal Information Security Management
Act (FISMA) requires a Certification and Accreditation
(C&A) process for all federal information technology
systems that utilize social media technologies. Further, this
C&A activity must be performed by an independent third
party auditing team and must conform to the Risk
Management Framework of the National Institute of
Standards and Technology.
The Information Quality Act (passed into law in 2001)
requires agencies to maximize the quality, objectivity,
utility, and integrity of information and services provided
to the public. The Act came into effect prior to the
development and use of prevailing social media
technologies, nonetheless,, agencies must ensure reasonable

Table 1. Selected Information Policies by Objective.

Policy Objectives related to Big Data
Privacy, Security, Accuracy, and Archiving
Governing and Governance
Access and Dissemination
Selected Relevant Policy Instruments
 Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA)
 Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA)
 Information Quality Act
 OMB Memo M-03-22 (Guidance for Implementing the Provisions of the
E-government Act of 2002)
 OMB Memo M-04-04 (E-Authentication Guidance for Federal
Agencies)
 OMB Memo M-05-04 (Policies for Federal Agency Websites)
 Federal Depository Library Program (Title 44 USC)
 E-government Act of 2002
 OMB Circular A-130 (Management of Federal Information Resources)
 Paperwork Reduction Act
 Various Copyright (Title 17 USC) and Patent & Trademark (Title 35
USC) legislation
 Americans with Disabilities Act
 Executive Order 13166 – Improving Access to Services for Persons with
Limited English Proficiency
 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act
 Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act
 Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act
 Telecommunications Act of 1996
 Depository Library Act of 1962
 Government Printing Office Electronic Information Access
Enhancement Act of 1993

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 The Proceedings of the 14th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research
suitable information and service quality strategies
consistent with the level of importance of the information
that include clearly identifying the limitations inherent in
the information dissemination product (e.g., possibility of
errors, degree of reliability, and validity) and taking
reasonable steps to remove the limitations inherent in the
information.
Under OMB Memo M-03-22 (Guidance for Implementing
the Provisions of the E-government Act of 2002), federal
public websites are required to conduct privacy impact
assessments, post privacy policies in a standardized
machine-readable format on each website, and post a
“Privacy Act Statement” that describes the Agency’s legal
authority for collecting personal data and how the data will
be used. Additionally, federal websites are prohibited from
using persistent cookies and other web tracking methods
unless an Agency head or designated Agency sub-head
approved their use for a compelling need. The Privacy Act
did not envision a time in which people would be
voluntarily communicating with government agencies in
digital “open spaces” like data.gov communities.
When government websites become two-way communities,
it opens the possibility of virus and other attack agents
being inserted into the government environment, as well as
the possibility of unintended release of information. OMB
Memo M-05-04 (Policies for Federal Agency Websites)
requires that agencies provide adequate security controls to
ensure information is resistant to tampering, to preserve
accuracy, to maintain confidentiality as necessary, and to
ensure that the information or service is available as
intended by the Agency and as expected by users.
One of the major thrusts of Big Data is to allow users to
take data from one website and combine it with data from
another, commonly referred to as “Mashups.” According to
this memo, agency public websites are required, to the
extent practicable and necessary to achieve intended
purposes, to provide all data in an open, industry standard
format that permits users to aggregate, disaggregate, or
otherwise manipulate and analyze the data to meet their
needs.
The presence of a related policy, however, does not
guarantee the application of a solution to an information
management issue raised by Big Data. For over 150 years,
the Government Printing Office has served as the lead and
coordinating agency in conjunction with the Federal
Depository Library Program (FDLP) – a network of nearly
150 full, partial, and regional Depositories. This
collaborative network has served as the primary means for
providing community access to government information.
However, the ability of Big Data initiatives to provide
direct constituent and government interactions raises major
challenges for the comprehensive collection and
dissemination of government information. While
responsibilities for archiving Big Data remain unaddressed,
much of this information disappears.
This situation also means that there decreasingly exists a
permanent and final “document,” upon which nearly all
4
records management and archiving efforts are built [1]. By
using third party applications and software that reside on
non-governmental information systems, or are in a
continual state of modification and adaptation, data
ownership, records schedules, and archiving are significant
issues.
5.2 Governing and Governance
U.S. policy instruments also establish parameters regarding
governing and governance. These instruments provide
broad principles and guidance for agencies, but fail to
address the use of Big Data, as nearly all pre-date the
development and use of Big Data technologies. Much of
such guidance encapsulated in information management
documents issues by the U.S. Office of Management and
Budget (OMB) establish principles that:
 Agencies are required to disseminate information to
the public in a timely, equitable, efficient, and
appropriate manner.
 Agencies are required to establish and maintain
Information Dissemination Product Inventories.
 Agencies must consider disparities of access and how
those without Internet access will have access to
important disseminations.
 Agencies should develop alternative strategies to
distribute information.
 When using electronic media, the regulations that
govern proper management and archiving of records
still apply.
 Agencies need to evaluate and determine the most
appropriate methods to capture and retain records on
both government servers and technologies hosted on
non-Federal hosts.
When considering these principles in light of Big Data
technologies, a range of issues surface, such as: the need
for alternative dissemination strategies for access to and
dissemination of government information and services; and
the need to consider records management, archiving, and
preservation.
The E-government Act of 2002 also established several
related principles of e-government that inform the creation
and use of Big Data by government agencies, such as:
requirements to develop priorities and schedules for
making government information available and accessible to
the public; post inventories on agency websites; complying
with requirements of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act
in all online activities; and to implementing and
maintaining an Information Dissemination Management
System.
5.3 Access and Dissemination
To increase access to government information and services
and to successfully facilitate engagement and collaboration,
members of the public must be able to access and use Big
Data technologies. Several policy instruments are directly
related to access and dissemination, including:
 Executive Order 13166 (Improving Access to Services
for Persons with Limited English Proficiency) requires
that agencies provide appropriate access to persons
with limited English proficiency, encompassing all
 The Proceedings of the 14th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research
“federally conducted programs and activities.” This
policy objective is meant to address gaps in e-
government usage among people who predominantly
speak a language other than English.
 The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act
requires equal access to all electronic materials used in
public education. The Americans with Disabilities Act
provides broad prohibitions on the exclusion of
persons with disabilities from government services
and benefits, including communication with the
government. Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act
creates broad standards of equal access to government
activities and information for individuals with
disabilities, and establishes general rights to accessible
information and communication technologies.
 The Telecommunications Act of 1996 promotes the
development and implementation of accessible
information and communication technologies being
used online.
 Section 508 requires that electronic and information
technologies purchased, maintained, or used by the
federal government meet certain accessibility
standards designed to make online information and
services fully available to people with disabilities.
 The Government Printing Office Electronic
Information Access Enhancement Act of 1993 updated
the statutes governing the depository library program
to pave the way for access to and dissemination of
digital government information, initially trough
GPOAccess, and now through FDSYS
(http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/).
Though not exhaustive, the above sections demonstrated
that there is a substantial information policy framework that
has yet to address Big Data throughout the information
lifecycle.
6. DATA PLATFORM, QUANTITY,
AND FORMATTING
Big Data require three key infrastructure ingredients: 1) a
platform for organizing, storing, and making data
accessible; 2) computing technology and power that can
process large-scale datasets; and 3) data formats that are
structured and usable. When it comes to public facing open
data systems, governments have relied on data portals, such
as data.gov (US) and data.gov.uk (UK). Big Data often
involves not megabits or gigabits of data, but rather
terabytes and even petabytes of data. As a result,
governments have also supported the development of
supercomputing resources housed in key research
institutions to facilitate access to the data processing power
needed to run computationally complex modeling systems.
These large-scale supercomputer centers are shared
resources that will need to increase their capacity and
availability in order to satisfy the needs of Big Data.
A key aspect of the U.S. Open Government National
Action Plan [13] is to essentially open source the data.gov
platform and make it available for replication in countries
around the world. As a public-facing platform, this can
serve as a tool that fosters collaboration, stores datasets,
engages communities, and offers opportunities for
5
participation. In addition, data can be stored and made
available in multiple formats (e.g., CSV, XML, Excel) via
these platforms. Each format has implications, and can
limit and/or promote the use of the data. But if the goal is
for broad public access and use, then commonly used data
formats are essential.
Simultaneously, however, there is a need for data
repositories for large-scale scientific and research datasets.
These exist at research institutions, universities, and
government agencies, but there is a need to create, adopt,
and adhere to formal data management standards and
practices across entities so as to ensure data compatibility,
naming conventions, and organizational schemes. In
addition, there is a need for well-defined data
documentation and codebooks so as to ensure informed use
of the datasets by researchers.
7. DATA QUALITY, AUTHORITY, &
GOVERNANCE
The quality, reliability, and authority of Big Data are key
issues for governments, the research and scientific, and
non-governmental and private sectors. Data of poor quality,
that are not certified and/or verified, or are collected using
faulty methods can lead to incorrect findings – which can
undermine significantly a range of decision and policy
making processes.
Key elements of the data policies that govern data.gov
include:
 Placing the burden on the government agencies
collecting and releasing the data to ensure data
accuracy, timeliness, and overall quality (as per the
Information Quality Act discussed in the Data
Policies section of this report.
 Requiring agencies to maintain version control so as to
ensure clear labeling of the datasets.
 Requiring agencies to ensure that no data with national
security implications are released through data.gov.
 Requiring agencies to ensure that confidentiality and
privacy guidelines are adhered to regarding released
data.
A key missing overall requirement is the specification of
metadata and data documentation standards. In addition,
Recommending metadata and documentation standards.
However, differing data communities (discussed below in
the Data Communities and Collaborations section of the
report) do recommend adherence to metadata and
documentation standards. For example, the Ocean
community recommends adherence to
(http://www.data.gov/communities/node/237/community-
of-practice/data-quality): ISO19115, the international
standard for geospatial metadata, which the Federal
Geographic Data Committee follows
(http://www.fgdc.gov/metadata/geospatial-metadata-
standards); The Dublin Core metadata element set for non-
geospacial data resources
(http://dublincore.org/documents/usageguide/elements.shtm
l); and Data documentation standards so as to provide
guidance on the contents and use of the datasets.
 The Proceedings of the 14th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research
These are key components to maintaining and making
available high quality Big Data datasets for consumption.
Another factor regarding data quality is ensuring the
veracity of the new datasets formed (usually referred to as
“mashups”) when datasets are combined, altered or
otherwise manipulated for analysis purposes. Often
disparate datasets that are not intended to integrate are
combined to create new datasets that have the potential to
inform researchers, governments, policymakers, and the
public. Often, however, there is not a formal process or
authorized entity that validates or verifies the combined
data. As stated on the data.gov site, “Once the data have
been downloaded from the agency's site, the government
cannot vouch for their quality and timeliness. Furthermore,
the US Government cannot vouch for any analyses
conducted with data retrieved from Data.gov”
(http://www.data.gov/data-policy). While this disclaimer
serves to limit the liability of the data.gov initiative, the
issue of secondary data use remains significant.
8. DIGITAL CURATION,
PRESERVATION, & AVAILABILITY
Digital curation “involves maintaining, preserving and
adding value to digital research data throughout its
lifecycle,” and “curated data in trusted digital repositories
may be shared among the wider…research community”
(http://www.dcc.ac.uk/digital-curation/what-digital-
curation). Importantly, digital curation focuses on
managing digital resources throughout a lifecycle, such as
conceptual issues regarding digital assets, the creation of
digital assets, access and use issues, and appraisal and
selection practices.
Embedded within the evolving area of the curation of
digital assets is Big Data. There is a need to engage in
active data management strategies for Big Data along the
entire lifecycle, particularly as new digital data assets
continue to grow. Issues to consider regarding Big Data
curation include:
 Moving data forward. Over time, older data may be
stored in formats that are incompatible with future
technologies and analysis tools. There will be a need
to ensure the migration of datasets to newer formats to
guarantee access and use in the future.
 Technology-embedded data. Big Data, in order to be
truly useful, can often be embedded in specialized
technologies, models, or proprietary systems (e.g.,
forecasting models, specialty software). The raw data
themselves may not lend themselves to similar
findings without the embedded technologies and
analysis platforms. The issue becomes one of deciding
to preserve the data and/or technologies that used the
data to generate research findings.
 Version control. Government data (e.g., employment,
productivity, GDP) are often updated. It is essential to
engage in version control to ensure correct labeling of
datasets for cataloguing and use.
 Continually evolving data. One of the major goals of
Big Data initiatives is to engage communities to
combine multiple large-scale datasets to create new
knowledge. Each of these permutations of the data are
6
a new dataset that requires documentation,
management, and preservation.
Though data are increasingly born digital and can be made
available instantaneously, governments have a large
repository of older datasets that require transformation into
more usable and accessible formats for today’s analysis and
use. The migration of these data can be costly, requires
effort, concerted initiative, and management. And yet
making such data publicly accessible can yield tremendous
insights into some of our most pressing social and scientific
needs.
Finally, Big Data are not necessarily born as Big Data – but
rather, through the accumulation, modification,
incorporation, and manipulation of many smaller datasets.
It is therefore of significant importance that there be a
“small data” curation and management plan in effect as
well.
9. DATA COMMUNITIES AND
COLLABORATIONS
There is a distinction between making Big Data available
and accessible, and fostering its use. Moreover, there is a
distinction between selective community data use (that is,
only scientists within a particular domain) and broader
interdisciplinary use that cuts across domains and more
typical research communities. When coupled with
emerging technologies such as social media, it is possible
to create broad-based communities that foster collaboration
and engagement, co-production, and crowdsourcing
solutions and innovations [1, 3, 5, 10, 15, 17].
Though not mutually exclusive, these opportunities offer
great promise and pose new challenges in redefining
government-community connections and interactions,
particularly through Big Data.
9.1 Building Big Data Communities
Though initially simply a repository for datasets, the
data.gov initiative initially saw low uptake and use of
released data. To promote and foster data use, data.gov
sought to create and grow data communities around key
topical areas where there was an interest and need.
Examples include:
 Education
(http://www.data.gov/communities/education), a
community built around national education datasets
from various agencies. Using visualizations,
classroom instructional modules, and datasets, the
community is designed to assess the state of education
on all levels.
 Health (http://www.data.gov/communities/health), a
community that is a one-stop resource for the growing
ecosystem of innovators who are turning data into new
applications, services, and insights that can help
improve health.
There are similar communities in the areas of business,
cities, energy, law, manufacturing, oceans, and safety, to
name some (see http://www.data.gov/communities/ for
more details).
 The Proceedings of the 14th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research
Another example of a data and information community is
science.gov. As an interagency initiative of 17 U.S.
government science organizations within 13 Federal
Agencies, science.gov provides searchable access to some
55 databases and millions of federal agency science pages,
research findings, and downloadable datasets.
One factor in building data communities is the growing
need to integrate and manage data from multiple sources
and sectors. Already under development are a range of
sensor-based technologies such as smart vehicles,
buildings, and homes – plus the increasingly ubiquitous
smartphones. These technologies enable a constant flow of
geo-located data regarding traffic, energy consumption,
water use, and more [19]. But significantly, these flows of
data need to intersect across governments, private sector
corporations, utility companies, devices (e.g., cars,
smartphones, home sensors, building sensors) and
individuals for them to be truly useful and inform the
development of communities and nations.
9.2 Promoting Research Collaborations
At the same time, however, there is a need to promote
deeper development within the research and scientific
communities to harness the power of Big Data. To that end,
the Obama Administration announced its “Big Data
Research and Development Initiative” in March 2012
(http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/o
stp/big_data_press_release_final_2.pdf). Collectively, six
U.S. agencies are seeding investments in Big Data
initiatives, including:
 National Science Foundation and the National
Institutes of Health - Core Techniques and
Technologies for Advancing Big Data Science &
Engineering. “Big Data” is a new joint solicitation
supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF)
and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that will
advance the core scientific and technological means of
managing, analyzing, visualizing, and extracting
useful information from large and diverse data sets.
 National Science Foundation. In addition to funding
the Big Data solicitation, and keeping with its focus on
basic research, NSF is implementing a comprehensive,
long-term strategy that includes new methods to
derive knowledge from data; infrastructure to manage,
curate, and serve data to communities; and new
approaches to education and workforce development.
 Department of Defense and the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency. Big Data investments in
research include how to harness and utilize massive
data in new ways and bring together sensing,
perception and decision support with autonomous
systems; improve situational awareness to help
warfighters and analysts and provide increased support
to operations; and develop computational techniques
and software tools for analyzing large volumes of data,
both semi-structured (e.g., tabular, relational,
categorical, meta-data) and unstructured (e.g., text
documents, message traffic).
 National Institutes of Health. The National Institutes
of Health announced that the data produced by the
international 1000 Genomes Project (200 terabytes)
7
was made freely available on the Amazon Web
Services (AWS) cloud. Researchers only will pay for
the computing services that they use.
 Department of Energy – Scientific Discovery Through
Advanced Computing. The Department of Energy
established the Scalable Data Management, Analysis
and Visualization (SDAV) Institute. The SDAC
Institute brings together six national laboratories and
seven universities to develop new tools to help
scientists manage and visualize data using the
Department’s supercomputers.
 US Geological Survey – Big Data for Earth System
Science. USGS provided grants through its John
Wesley Powell Center for Analysis and Synthesis. The
Center catalyzes innovative thinking in Earth system
science by providing scientists a place and time for in-
depth analysis, state-of-the-art computing capabilities,
and collaborative tools invaluable for making sense of
huge data sets. These Big Data projects seek to
improve our understanding of climate change,
earthquake recurrence rates, and ecological indicators.
These efforts serve to foster data communities as well as
make an impact on pressing social and scientific
challenges. And, as noted by Lane [8] and Braveman [2],
funding Big Data initiatives offers the ability to seek
relationship linkages in scientific grand challenges by
bringing together often-disparate disciplines that might not
otherwise collaborate.
In addition to the “Big Data Initiative,” an international
coalition created the “Digging into Data” challenge
(http://www.diggingintodata.org/) in 2009. Sponsored by
the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Arts
& Humanities Research Council, the National Endowment
for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, the
Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, the
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of
Canada, and the Joint Information Systems Committee
(JISC), the Digging into Data challenge sought to address
how Big Data changes the research landscape for the
humanities and social sciences.
10. RECOMMENDATIONS
Based on the above discussion regarding the Big Data
experience in the U.S., there are a number of suggested
recommendations:
 Review and recalibrate information and data
policies as necessary. The U.S. has a complex
information and data policy structure, and it is
increasingly out of date for today’s data and
information flows and technologies. There are a
number of critical areas in which there is a need to
review and update policies that, for example, govern:
o Privacy. Big Data can contain a range of
personally identifiable data at the individual,
household, vehicle, or other levels. Privacy
laws and policies can contradict the
opportunities in Big Data, but Big Data
simultaneously can violate the privacy rights of
individuals or communities.
o Data Reuse. Data are often collected by
governments or other entities (e.g., utility
 The Proceedings of the 14th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research
companies, telecommunication carriers) for a
particular purpose such as receipt of social or
other services. And, individual government
agencies and/or corporations often have
acceptable use and privacy policies that govern
data collection and use. However, Big Data
increasingly combine datasets from across
sectors, governments, and households to create
new insights and inform decision- and policy-
making. Data use and reuse policies should be
reviewed and updated to give individuals clear
guidelines and make informed decisions
regarding their data.
o Data accuracy. As new datasets are created
through combining disparate data from
different agencies, researchers, scientists,
private sector companies (e.g.,
telecommunications companies, vehicle
manufacturers, utility companies) and citizen
groups, there is a need to develop and ensure
data quality standards. Data collected for
single purpose use may not be fully compatible
with other datasets, and this can lead to errors
and a range of false findings. There is both a
need to ensure data quality as well as a
verification system that validates reported
findings. The disclaimer on data.gov
(http://www.data.gov/privacy-policy) places
this burden on 1) the agencies releasing the
data, and 2) those downloading and using the
data. This is an inadequate response to data use
that can have significant impact on social,
policy, and science programs.
o Data access. Policies that govern access to
data such as Freedom of Information, archives,
and preservation need to account for digital
data. But also, given that Big Data often
combine datasets from different sectors –
research, scientific, public, and corporate –
there is the question of what policies govern
access to and preservation of newly formed
datasets that are created with cross-sector data
that are neither fully public nor private in terms
of their content. In addition, Big Data raises
the issue of public access to government
datasets. Publicly accessible portals such as
data.gov provide baseline access, and there is a
need for such platforms to data.
o Archiving and preservation. There are a
number of issues regarding archives and
preservation policies regarding Big Data,
including the large-scale nature of digital
datasets, the embedding of analysis and
findings within certain technologies and
techniques, and the raw data files. One side of
the coin is records management and archival
policies, requirements, and practices of
government agencies, collaborative
partnerships, and archival agencies. The other
side of the coin is the long-term preservation
and moving datasets forward over time as data
and information technologies change. Also,
8
there is a need to consider the archiving and
long-term preservation of research datasets
created at non-governmental institutions such
as universities and research centers funded by
government research agencies. These strategies
should include overall dataset management so
as to ensure the availability of smaller datasets
that can become part of Big Data efforts.
 Robust data platform and architecture. The data
platform and information architecture of Big Data are
significant issues to resolve. There is a need for a
robust technology infrastructure for organizing,
curating, storing, and making datasets accessible to the
research and scientific communities, the private and
other sectors, and the public. These platforms need to
provide both physical (technology) and intellectual
(organizational) access to Big Data, and need to
integrate seamlessly with a range of technologies,
analysis techniques, and information architectures. In
the case of publicly accessible platforms such as
data.gov, such public facing services serve as a
generic and publicly available platform. There may
also be a need for specialized platforms for very large
scale datasets in particular sectors (e.g., health,
environment).
 Processing and computing power. Big Data requires
significant computing power to process, analyze,
manipulate, and represent the data through
visualizations. More to the point, Big Data requires the
capacity that supercomputers offer. In the U.S.,
supercomputer centers are distributed at several
universities or university systems across the country
(e.g., Ohio Supercomputer Center), Mississippi State
University, the San Diego Supercomputer Center).
There may be a need to increase supercomputing
capacity as increased numbers of Big Data datasets,
applications, visualizations, and other products require
more intensive computer processing and time
allocations.
 Data standards. Big Data requires interoperability at
the technology level, but also at the data level through
the adherence to metadata standards. Different
domains may have varying metadata standards such as
ISO19115 (the international standard for geospatial
metadata); the Dublin Core metadata element set for
non-geospacial data resources
(http://dublincore.org/documents/usageguide/elements
.shtml); the emerging Data Documentation Initiative
(DDI) for social and behavioral science
(http://www.ddialliance.org/); and others such as
Z39.87 (MIX – Metadata for Images in XML;
http://www.loc.gov/standards/mix/) for digital images
and the Darwin Core
(http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/index.htm) for biodiversity
data. Those creating, generating, and disseminating
Big Data datasets need to consider appropriate data
standards formats to ensure collaborations and data
reuse.
In addition, there needs to be documentation standards
for public release files that describe the organization
of the dataset, data elements, data type (e.g., numeric,
 The Proceedings of the 14th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research
text), and other descriptive information regarding
dataset contents. Also, limitations of the data should
be acknowledged and made apparent.
 Data sharing across sectors. As Big Data
increasingly involves the passing of data in real time
between systems, governments, and sectors, there is a
need for a robust data sharing and interoperability
framework. The transportation domain provides an
illustrative example. Increasingly vehicles are being
equipped with sensors that can log and report a range
of real time data such as speed and roads traveled.
Such data (under the jurisdiction of the automobile
manufacturers) can inform issues such as congestion
and traffic flow, usually a function under the purview
of local or national government transportation entities.
A different example regards public transportation.
Sensors on smartphones (under the control of
telecommunications carriers) can inform public transit
authorities about the use of public transit systems (i.e.,
busses, trains) to inform decisions about capacity
needs. The ability for these data collection and
reporting systems to seamlessly integrate and create
collaborative analysis techniques, is essential to fully
realize the benefits of these types of Big Data
applications. As noted above, it may be necessary to
revise information and data policies to reflect this
integrative data context.
 Data curation, archiving, and preservation. The
development of a framework for the management and
curation of digital assets, which encompass Big Data,
is essential. Digital assets go through a lifecycle from
conceptualization (which includes establishing
metadata standards) through to transformation
(forward migration to new formats for future use) –
and multiple steps and processes along the way. This
includes archival activities and preservation efforts
designed specifically for digital data assets across a
range of data types – numeric, pictographic, audio,
video, and multiple media. Metadata schemes, Big
Data technology platforms and information
architecture, data sharing processes, and data policies
all converge in this space to create a series of curation
issues that require significant development, planning,
and implementation strategies.
 Foster research and data communities. Funding,
creating research priorities, seeding projects, and
bringing together stakeholders is critical to the success
of Big Data initiatives. There is a need to:
o Allocate strategically funding to Big Data
initiatives to address grand challenges faced in
the scientific and research communities (e.g.,
climate change, weather prediction), but also to
address critical challenges faced in
communities (e.g., health and wellness,
transportation).
o Provide interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary
funding opportunities that bring together
scientific and research communities in ways
that promote innovation through Big Data.
o Facilitate interactions across governments,
sectors, and research and science communities
through the creation of Big Data domains (e.g.,
9
environment, economic, health). If the idea is
to promote the creation and use of Big Data,
then there is often a need to help build data
communities – simply releasing data may be
necessary, but not necessarily sufficient, to
foster and grow Big Data efforts.
o Facilitate data exchanges and sharing across
sectors. Given the range of “smart”
technologies, often geo-located and sensor-
based with data coming from multiple inputs
(e.g., individuals, vehicles, smartphones), there
is a need to engage in large-scale data
collaboratives that engage various stakeholder
communities, establish data protocols,
establish data exchange and reporting
mechanisms, and include analysis and
decision-making and policy-making efforts.
Though innovative Big Data initiatives have begun
in a grass-roots way, there is sufficient potential
benefit that now requires a clear science, funding,
and resource allocation set of policies and seed
funds.
The above recommendations are selective and serve to
offer a number of considerations regarding the promotion
and development of Big Data efforts. They also show that
there is a substantial need for a Big Data governance model
to more fully address the policies and practices surrounding
Big Data.
11. CONCLUSION
Big Data initiatives hold significant promise for policy- and
decision-making, for fostering greater understanding of
significant scientific and social challenges, for fostering
collaboration between governments and citizens and
businesses, and for ushering in a new era of digital
government services. As this paper showed, however, there
are a range of policy issues governing Big Data to consider
in a holistic approach than can ultimately lead to a Big Data
governance model. There is a need for future research that
explores such a model and how best to consider Big Data in
that context.
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