gtr april 2013

Treat your citizens

like numbers

Bigdata

ROUNDTABLE: DATA CENTRES ● BUILDING MOBILE APPS

GOVERNMENT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW

AP

RIL

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BROADBAND pOLIcy smAckDOwN:

Labor vs coalition

Can the Cloud sAvE yOUR BAck END?

Ballarat’s skILLs INcUBATOR

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GTR FEBRUARY 2013 | 1

Building moBile appsMobile apps are powerful tools for engaging and empowering citizens. But be careful before you dive in: getting a mobile app working is one thing – but getting a useful mobile app working is something entirely different. GTR gets tips from those who have already gone app happy.

roundtaBle: data CentresA glut of new data centres has spoilt Australian government agencies for choice when it comes to picking a data centre for their hosting cloud-computing efforts. But where do we go from here? We bring together four leading data-centre industry players to get their thoughts.

speCial features

22 54

COvER STORy:BIG DATA: TREAT yOUR cITIzENs LIkE NUmBERs

regulars2 Editor’s letter

4 News

38 Opinions: Kevin Noonan, ESRI,

Efficiency Leaders, Nuance,

Technology One, Ezscan, Datacom

64 NBN Update

Features28 Regional centres, global innovation

GTR looks inside Australia’s largest and

most successful technology park, where

a long-running public-private partnership

is tackling the IT skills crisis.

32 e-government broadband:

Labor v Coalition

For all its many facets, the September

election will in part be a referendum on

the progress and future of the national

broadband network (NBN). We canvas

both parties’ positions on the future of

broadband-enabled e-government.

32 City of Gosford

An investment in virtual servers and

desktops has improved Gosford’s

operational resilience.

51 Conference wrap: DIMS, CCF 2013

Highlights from GTR’s Cloud Computing

Forum 2013 and Digital Information

Management & Security 2013 events.

Case studies16 University of Ballarat

A team of University of Ballarat

researchers is repurposing old water-

resource and sports-participation data to

uncover striking new information.

26 Australian Bureau of Statistics

A mobile app is literally putting the

ABS’ vast repositories of data at the

fingertips of its users – and empowering

government in the process.

48 New Zealand Transport Authority

Migrating a data warehouse with 1.7

billion records was only part of a major

systems modernisation for the NZ

roads authority.

If you thought it was already hard to keep track of your agency’s

data, fasten your seatbelts: big data is legitimising data hoarding

and helping agencies release previously unknown value from

both structured and unstructured information. It’s a hidden

user manual for government reinvention – but are you ready to

tap its potential?

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10

2 | GTR FEBRUARY 2013

EDITOR

David Braue

e: [email protected]

NATIONAL SALES MANAGER

Yuri Mamistvalov


Tel: 03 8534 5008

ART DIRECTOR

Annette Epifanidis


Tel: 03 8534 5030

DESIGN & PRODUCTION

Nicholas Thorne

CONTRIBUTORS

Tom Scicluna, Lee Fisher, Demos Gougoulas,

Brad Howarth, Adam Turner, Kevin Noonan,

Jeff Segarra, Alicia Kouparitsas

MELBOURNE OFFICE

Level 8, 574 St Kilda Rd. Melbourne Vic 3004

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Phone: 03 8534 5000 Fax: 03 9530 8911

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Far too much late-night TV watching has made me, I am somewhat embarrassed to admit, a closet fan of the show ‘Hoarders’.

If you have not seen it, this is a display of schadenfreude in which cameras linger over homes choked with the detritus of human existence: old furniture, newspapers, clothing, rubbish, pizza boxes and often the pizza itself. The residents are often blissfully unaware that they are suffocating themselves underneath ever-growing mountains of stuff – or they know it, but lack the will to fix it.

Managers of large enterprise data stores can no doubt relate. Many information environments have grown in quite the same way over the years, with accumulations of ever more voluminous corporate data creating the bizarre situation where IT staff spend more time maintaining the data than they do in helping the business actually do anything with it.

The growing popularity of big data cuts both ways. On the one hand, it’s encouraging businesses to feed their inner hoarders, accumulating data on nearly every aspect of their operations in the hope that it might be useful one day. This requires an ever-increasing investment in data management technologies and processes, which take on increasing urgency when the corporate mandate becomes an explicit instruction to keep just about everything.

On the other hand, big data recognises that public and private-sector organisations are accumulating this data anyway – so they might as well use it. Fed by evolving AGIMO policy and growing recognition that governments are a cornucopia of valuable but untapped information, big data has become government’s biggest threat – and its biggest opportunity – for years.

One of the many uses for big-data initiatives will be to deliver information to mobile devices that allow analysis by departmental executives, front-line staff – or even by citizens themselves. This sort of interactivity is the vanguard of the brave new world of e-government – but, as you’ll see in our building mobile apps feature, joining it requires a lot more than just a good idea.

In this issue, we also consider whether traditional monolithic enterprise business applications are set for a shakeup that could counteract the nightmare flood of failed government projects in the past. We also tour an innovative skills-development facility in Ballarat, Victoria where IBM, the Victorian state government, University of Ballarat and City of Ballarat have seen great results.

Speaking of results, there’s an election on the boil – and it’s going to be a fierce one. Whether the national broadband network (NBN) will be a major issue or not, remains to be seen – but this issue’s broadband feature nonetheless positions both parties’ policies to give you a sense of how their respective priorities might change e-government positioning depending on the election’s outcome.

There’s lots more buried in the following pages; the best way to find out what, is to start flipping those pages. And, as always, please flip me an email if there’s anything you’d like to say, share, or see from GTR in the future.

David Braue, EditorE: [email protected]

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AGImO shaping policy mandate for govt “drowning” in big data

management – and to build better policy options

for government and for ministers to consider.”

Open for comment into April and due for

completion by mid-year, the big-data paper

Figure 1 BiG daTa and cloud compuTinG value GRaph

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Traditional Hardware InvestmentCloud Investment

Actual UsageMissed Opportunity

Federal government policy-setting body

AGIMO has released a big-data strategy issues

paper outlining the results of early efforts of

the organisation’s big-data brainstorming to

date, government CIO Glenn Archer said in

announcing the release of the paper.

Addressing the Australian Information

Industry Association (AIIA) backed Navigating

Big Data Summit in Canberra, Archer noted

that AGIMO had already conducted extensive

discussions – with government bodies, private-

sector organisations, and peers in the US, UK,

New Zealand and Canada – in an effort

to identify best-practice methods for

aggregating, analysing and making use of

massive quantities of data.

“Australian public service agencies collect

very significant volumes of information,” Archer

said. “They relate to citizens and businesses,

organisations’ internal operations, the nature

of interactions with external parties such as

suppliers and communities.”

“Analytical tools…. Offer enormous

opportunities to improve the way we deliver

services to citizens,” he continued. “We’re

looking to develop new policy about how we can

use big data and analytic tools to get a strategic

approach for a whole-of-government view of data

(bit.ly/154ylup) isn’t AGIMO’s only nod to the

big-data explosion: AGIMO and an Australian

Taxation Office-sponsored working group recently

brought together departmental representatives

and academics from numerous institutions to

define the terms of reference for a planned Data

Analytics Centre of Excellence, which will serve

as a centrepiece of the government’s efforts to

tap into the benefits of big data.

Development of big-data guidelines, best

practices and technological tools had become

a key priority for AGIMO and other government

bodies as government organisations were

increasingly finding themselves “drowning

in the data” they had collected, Dr Brenton

Cooper, technical director for information

superiority with the Defence Systems

Innovation Centre (DSIC) told the audience.

“Rather than being task driven, they’re

trying to make the processes they deal with,

data driven,” explained Cooper, who has

worked extensively with Department of Defence

agencies to help them get on top of their

growing data stores.

To read the rest of this story, visit bit.ly/WJK7oK.


Employers focus on retention as ICT staff shortage, election biteThe impact of a severe shortage of ICT skills is

only being moderated by weakening demand

from the government sector as the uncertainty

around this year’s federal election bites the

labour market, the latest Clarius Skills index

has found.

Compiled quarterly by employment

specialist Clarius, the index (bit.ly/Ze7xag)

compares industry demand for a range of skills,

with the supply in the market for those skills. A

rating of 100 indicates that supply and demand

are matched, while values above 100 suggest

a shortage of particular skills and values below

100, an oversupply.

The latest figures suggested that

demand for ICT managers has softened

since December 2007, when the survey put

that category at 100.7; the latest figure was

98.2, up slightly from a five-year low of 97.6 in

September 2012.

The category called ICT Professionals,

however, showed a less positive story. While

the market balance had improved markedly from

December 2007 – when the ranking of 110.4

put the category into an extreme shortage – the

latest figures had it at 102.2, which Clarius

classifies as a ‘very high’ shortage.

Taken together, the ICT-related categories

represented a net shortage of 4600 staff –

making ICT the industry sector in the most need

of additional staff. This, according to Clarius

Group CEO Kym Quick, will push employers to

focus more intensely on retention strategies to

avoid becoming casualties of the higher demand.

“Positive economic signals are reversing

[past] poor business sentiment, and this should

lead to increased hiring activity,” Quick said

in a statement. “This encourages candidates,

who have stayed put in recent years, to look for

new opportunity – hence the churn. As a result,

businesses are concerned they will lose key

talent and IP to competitors.”

“It’s even tougher for companies operating

in sectors where there are professional skills

shortages because competition for the best

talent will be fierce.”

Another technology-related jobs category,

ICT and Telecommunications Technicians,

was in a better situation, with a rating of

98.1 suggesting there were enough skills in

the market. But all areas of the jobs market

are likely to see changes in the leadup to

the election: while many will welcome the

certainty provided by the announcement of

the election, the Clarius report warned that

the announcement of the election “is already

beginning to affect decision making on certain

projects, particularly in government sectors.”

To read the rest of this story, visit bit.ly/148o8ua.

Victoria’s state government will overhaul

its ICT strategy with aggressive open-data

initiatives – which will see agencies releasing

1000 data sets for public use this year – and

“unprecedented” moves to better engage with

local suppliers, state ICT minister Gordon

Rich-Phillips told the audience at an AIIA

luncheon where he launched the new Victorian

Government ICT Strategy.

Finalised after a public and industry

consultation process over the course of the

past year, the strategy outlines 50 hard action

points for 2013 and 2014 that will seek to

improve the process of ICT implementation – a

process that, the minister noted, had been

severely compromised by ongoing ICT-related

issues with the likes of the Myki ticketing

system and the state’s CenITex shared-

services organisation.

“ICT is fundamental to improving service

capability,” Rich-Phillips said. “Byt with ICT

expenditure of around $1.5 billion per year, we

need to ensure that is appropriately managed

and that we have the capabilities in place to

manage this in a strategic and holistic way.”

Open data plays a significant role in the

strategy, with organisations expected to make

1000 data sets available by September this year.

Among the other targets set by the minister

are technology-specific goals, such as the

requirement that major service delivery agencies

transition three key transactions online by

31 December 2014; that they target a 15%

reduction in customer effort from baseline by

December 2014; and that they commence five

service interoperability projects by July 2014.

A review of and implementation of ICT

governance and organisational structures will

be complete by March 2013. By June this year,

all major ICT-enabled projects will have adopted

High Value Risk processes and by July, the

industry will be regularly engaged in the design

phase of major government solutions. The

strategy sets a goal of having ten government

apps developed externally by March 2014.

“This is an unprecedented shift in the way

in which government engages with the ICT

industry for the delivery of ICT services and

systems to government meet new demand,”

Rich-Phillips said, noting that government

agencies will develop five policies, services or

solutions using co-design and/or co-production

by December 2014.

“It is about effectively managing ICT

expenditure by developing an innovative

culture that manages risk, increases

productivity, and delivers better services

through innovation – and in doing so, helps to

stimulate growth in the industry.”

By December 2014, the government will

introduce analytics and reporting against agency

KPIs. By that time, the strategy is expected to

have delivered a 15% direct cost reduction

through shared or reused ICT solutions.

To read the rest of this story, visit

Open data, industry collaboration drive new victorian ICT strategy G

ordo

n R

ich-

Phi

llips

bit.ly/14cvvpK.


Australia no malware source but new security threats persistAustralia is the region’s fifth most-targeted

country for malware attacks but tight local

regulations have kept it off the leader boards

in metrics such as the number of malware host

servers, the latest security threat report from

security firm Websense has found.

The Websense 2013 Threat Report (bit.

ly/13Fahve) found that, despite growing user

awareness of some kinds of security threats,

malware authors were continuing to gain

ground through a combination of brute-force

Netsuite takes cloud skills to uni as ICT salaries stagnateBusiness-applications provider Netsuite has

scored a vote of academic legitimacy for

cloud applications by getting the University of

Technology Sydney (UTS) to integrate cloud

training into its postgraduate MBA and Master

of Business courses.

The partnership comes under the auspices of

Netsuite’s SuiteAcademy educational program,

which has been developed to boost the presence

of cloud-based business tools within university

curricula. This will see students trained on the

use of NetSuite, a broad cloud-based business

software platform, to learn how it mirrors real-

world process flows and revenue cycles.

SuiteAcademy has already attracted over

100 universities around the world, all of whom

are trying to update their business credentials

to make them as relevant as possible for the

modern business world.

“Our partnership with NetSuite is about

producing work-ready graduates for a market

rapidly embracing cloud computing,” UTS

Business School dean Prof Roy Green said in

a statement. “Given cloud software automates

many traditional professional functions, our

graduates need to be lateral thinkers capable of

adding value to organisations in new ways.”

Those lateral thinkers may be working

smarter as well as harder, but that doesn’t

mean they and their ICT-management peers will

necessarily see the benefits of their efforts in

the form of increased salaries.

The recently released Hudson ICT

Salary & Employment Insights 2013 report

(bit.ly/y02vmd) found that fully 75.1%

of ICT professionals are taking on more

responsibilities than they had a year ago, but

that 56.1% said they had not been financially

compensated for the added responsibilities.

In other words, job descriptions may

be changing but employee value-add

isn’t necessarily being recognised with

commensurate pay rises. It’s also not

necessarily due to the impetus of the

employees themselves: in many cases,

workers are simply being given more

responsibility after a teammate leaves and –

in four out of five cases – isn’t replaced by

the employer.

To read the rest of this story, visit bit.ly/1619i0B.

2012 email BReaKdoWn(conTenT only)

Spam76.4%

Legitimate21.6%

Phishing1.6%

Malware Attachments0.4%

2012 email ToTal ThReaT BReaKdoWn(conTenT and uRls)

Malicious72.3%

Legitimate21.6%

Spam6.1%

attacks and subtle, below-the-radar activity

through which their malicious code is able to

evade technological security controls.

Noting that the number of malicious

URLs was up 430% last year in the Asia-

Pacific region compared with 2011, Bob

Hansmann, senior product marketing manager

with Websense, said organisations’ actual

susceptibility to this risk profile varied widely

and often related to user behaviour more than

technological protections.

“Today’s attacks are multi-stage and start

with email or phishing,” he told GTR. “The kinds

of things Australia has done have prevented

Australia from being a host for these kinds of

attacks, but you’re still going to find yourselves

targeted victims as [Australian] users are

perhaps a little more open to clicking things”

than users in other countries.

Concerted education campaigns can

impact infection rates, as in the case of once-

massive rogue antivirus malware, which tells

users they’re infected with a

virus and directs them to an

infective URL to “fix” it.

“This had about an

18-month run,” Hansmann

said, “and today there are

still over 200,000 URLs

that are active, fake antivirus

or rogue antivirus. But

the number of people that

actually encounter and

click on it is very, very low

because users have become

aware of it – and don’t fall for

it anymore.”

To read the rest of this story, visit bit.ly/WVLI57.

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ByOD sandbox tech gets Defence security tickGovernment organisations wanting to manage

bring your own device (BYOD) rollouts using

‘sandbox’ security technology have a new

option after Good Technology’s Good for

Enterprise (GFE) received Defence Signals

Directorate Cryptographic Evaluation

(DCE) certification.

GFE’s presence on the Evaluated Products

List, listing devices and environments that

have been tested and approved for secure

government use, makes it a tool of choice

for other government agencies concerned

about maintaining the integrity and security of

their information.

The current certification provides EAL4+

recognition for GFE, which is the first mobile-

container technology to sit on the list. It joins

the likes of Apple’s iOS, Microsoft Windows

Mobile 6.5, and the BlackBerry 10 mobile

operating system – which was approved in

a pre-release coup that helped the upstart

platform make its case for government takeup.

Designed to provide a highly-protected

workspace to which access can be tightly

controlled and information protected, GFE

supports iOS, Android and Windows Mobile

devices. However, the DSD certification only

extends to iOS devices at this point – allowing

iPhones and iPads running GFE to access

and store information classified at up to

PROTECTED level.

The need to quickly certify mobile

enablement tools has not been lost on the

DSD, which continually revises its accreditation

capabilities to provide relevant guidance for

government agencies.

“DSD’s certification of Good Technology’s

secure container enables Government

departments to unleash far more power

and productivity from iOS devices without

compromising on cyber security,” said Chris

Roberts, vice president of world-wide public

sector with Good Technology, in a statement.

“The key requirement for public sector

organisations should be to minimise risk of data

being compromised, such as ‘leaking’ from

devices or networks.”

An early user of GFE is the Department

of Sustainability, Environment, Water,

Population and Communities, which has

deployed GFE’s encrypted container

technology and found that it minimises ICT

support overheads while maintaining an

adequate security boundary around the

government information.

To read the rest of this story, visit bit.ly/WJL3ml.

ByOD makes employees happier, companies more profitable: surveyOrganisations embracing Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) are seeing significant

improvements in sales, profits and productivity after adapting their work

processes around consumer technologies, a recent survey has found.

Many organisations have resisted BYOD because of its disruptive technology

and the potential security risks it introduces. However, the research findings – by

Avanade, a global solutions and managed-services provider, which surveyed

nearly 600 C-level executives in Australia and 18 other countries – suggested

overwhelmingly that embracing consumer technologies makes workers happier

and more productive by letting them work with technology they know.

Within Australia, the results suggested, 83% of companies that have

changed their business processes to accommodate consumer technologies,

have seen positive benefits afterwards. This included 34% reporting increased

profits, 40% reporting better work being produced, and 57% that have been able

to respond to customers more quickly than before.

“Australian companies are embracing consumer technologies in the

workplace at a higher rate than their global counterparts and are more willing to

change business processes to accommodate emerging work trends,” Avanade’s

Australian country manager, Jeyan Jeevaratnam, said in a statement. “This

progressive approach is leading to tangible benefits.”

While some of the findings were consistent with widely-held ideas about

mobility – for example, that 62% of employees use personal devices in the

workplace or that an equal proportion use smartphones for basic work tasks

like reading email, online documents and calendar invitations – others were

something of a surprise.

Specifically, the Avanade research showed a strong preference for

tablet computers, with one-third of respondents indicating they use tablets

for advanced business purposes such as CRM, project

management, content creation, and data analysis. This figure was

slightly lower than the 40% that use tablets for basic work tasks

– but shows how quickly tablets have gained status as serious

business tools.

To read the rest of this story, visit bit.ly/YGUXAz.


Big-data storage needs big-storage dataOrganisations must run their numbers well

to ensure they’re getting the most bang

for their data-storage buck when adopting

storage-intensive big-data strategies, a senior

economist with storage giant Hitachi Data

Systems (HDS) has warned.

Noting that organisations must consider

different storage architectures depending

on their data requirements, HDS chief

economist David Merrill has told GTR

that a quick study in the dynamics of

‘storage economics’ – HDS, for one, has

identified 34 different kinds of enterprise-

storage costs – can be invaluable for

organisations that haven’t revisited their

storage costs in a while.

“For the past few years, storage has been

highly deterministic,” Merrill explains. “We can

talk about the total cost, and with a mapping

system can map [requirements] to solutions

that are proven to reduce costs. This leads to

very easy discussions with senior managers,

storage directors and CIOs who know how the

economics of storage behave.”

Organisations trying to shovel massive

volumes of big-data information into a data

warehouse are likely to find their costs

become unsustainable if they insist on using

just expensive, high-performance disks.

The economic impact of such strategies

quickly becomes obvious once they’re applied

to careful storage-economics analysis –

and the results can be an eye-opener. “The

economic model exposes architectural

mistakes that were made in building up to

big data,” says Merrill, who blogs regularly on

the challenges and opportunities of costing

storage strategies.

“When they first do big data, organisations

build proofs of concept, then keep replicating

that initial design. This is fine for a test-bed,

but the economics change as you build

out to several hundred or thousand nodes,

and several hundred terabytes of data.

Storage economics helps us know when an

architecture is economically unsustainable.”

To read the rest of this story, visit bit.ly/YguhLk.

vic IcT strategy drives telecoms procurement, Web revampThe state of Victoria is revamping the sourcing of

telecommunications by state government agencies

with a rebranded procurement arrangement

designed to improve service levels, reduce costs

and increase competition across the sector.

The new program, known as VicConnect, will

modernise the decade-old Telecommunications

Purchasing and Management Strategy (TPAMS)

to reflect changes in the market since its

introduction. Currently being floated past a

range of ICT industry organisations for feedback,

VicConnect will address connectivity, mobility and

collaboration services.

VicConnect is among the first program

deliverables to be kicked off in the wake of the

state’s formal Victorian Government ICT Strategy,

which technology minister Gordon Rich-Phillips

presaged last year and launched at an AIIA event in

February in which he anticipated “unprecedented”

industry engagement around the 50 hard action

points in the document.

“This is about effectively managing ICT

expenditure,” he said, “by developing an innovative

culture that manages risk, increases productivity,

and delivers better services through innovation – and

in doing so, helps to stimulate growth in the industry.”

VicConnect isn’t the only initiative to stem

from the launch of the ICT strategy: the state

government also recently debuted a totally

revamped version of the state’s top-level

Web portal, which receives over 450,000

unique visitors per month.

The new version of vic.gov.au – the

site’s first overhaul since 2003 – is mobile-

optimised and has a focus on effective

search capabilities, with linkages into a

range of social media services; lists of

topic-based direct information feeds; a

consolidated Twitter feed for the entire state

government; and a directory of Victorian

government mobile apps.

To read the rest of this story, visit bit.ly/YFndaB.


big data

In an economIc clImaTe

where governmenT agencIes

are BeIng pushed To do

more wITh less, BIg daTa Is

emergIng as a means To Take

an asseT ThaT agencIes have

In aBundance and puT IT To

good use.

Story by BrAD HOWArTH

Treat your citizens

like numbers

Bigdata


across Australia government agencies are looking at how they can use new big data techniques for analysis of large volumes of structured and unstructured data, utilising

a new range of tools that provide faster and cheaper analytics capabilities than traditional data warehouse and reporting tools. The goal is to gain greater knowledge from their data stores, and much more quickly than has been possible with traditional techniques.

While many of the technologies involved are based on open source tools and commodity hardware, big data is causing a rethink in how data is used and the types of data being analysed.

According to IBM Global Business Service’s partner for public sector Joana Valente, public sector agencies around the world are looking to big data to increase the efficiency of service delivery.

“With tightening budgets and an aging population with declining revenue coming in, and pressure on their ability to access skilled resources, the ability to deliver the same services more cost-effectively is critical,” Valente says. “Data is really the only lever available to government executives that can deliver them concurrently improved cost efficiency as well as improved customer satisfaction.”

She cites one long-running example in the US, where the Social Security Administration has been using data analytics to recommend which claims for disability entitlements require further investigation, and which don’t.

“What they did was look at all of the different kinds of cases that it had in train, and developed a business approach to ascertaining which of those cases could be approved faster, because they presented less risk and there was an obvious need to deliver the benefit to the individual,” Valente says.

She says that project has delivered more than US$2 billion (A$1.93 billion) in savings over a period of five years through more efficient use of the department’s resources.

real-time governmentIn Australia, SAP is working with NSW Fire & rescue to use big data analytics for real-time situational awareness. SAP’s head of industry and industry principal for Public Sector, Patrick Bodegraven, says Fire & rescue is using SAP’s HANA in-memory database technology to analyse data to determine where events are happening and issue alerts, and even forecast where events are going to happen.

“Big data is going from knowing what you know today, to knowing what is potentially going to happen in the future, and anticipate and respond accordingly,” Bodegraven says.

He adds that HANA is also being used by public sector agencies around the world to find gaps in

revenue collection, such as non-compliance in the payment of infringements and penalties.

“By using big data and consolidating information from different data sources one agency was able to identify where debt existed, and was also able to identify the best ways of facilitating the payments,” Bodegraven says. “It has facilitated an increase in the velocity of payments, and determined the best time of day to call people and follow them up about these outstanding debts and penalties.

Numerous Australian public sector agencies are looking for their own ways to harness Big Data. At the federal level a big data working group has been formed to develop a whole-of-government strategy and determine the best ways to develop the practices, skills, frameworks and common infrastructure to deal with big data collectively (see sidebar overleaf ).

Treasury, in particular, is an agency that has long grappled with big data problems in terms of modelling the Australian economy. A year ago it commissioned its Odysseus data warehouse, based on Microsoft technology, as the repository of data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the reserve Bank of Australia and other sources. Odysseus was commissioned for modelling the domestic economy, but its use is now being broadened to other groups within Treasury.

While Odysseus represents a breakthrough for Treasury analysts, this data is generally considered to come from so-called lag indicators. Hence Treasury CIO Peter Alexander is excited by new frontiers in what he refers to as “true Big Data” – including analysis of unstructured social media data, and even data from environmental sensors.

“BIg daTa can Include ‘found’ daTa sources such as socIal medIa feeds….The relaTIonshIp BeTween Those sources and The hIgh qualITy measures produced By The sTaTIsTIcal agencIes Is proBlemaTIc.”

Pat

rick

Bod

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“DATA IS REALLY THE ONLY LEVER AVAILABLE TO

GOVERNMENT ExECUTIVES THAT CAN DELIVER THEM

CONCURRENTLY IMPROVED COST EFFICIENCY AS WELL

AS IMPROVED CUSTOMER SATISFACTION.”

According to Alexander, Treasury is working with the CSIrO to adopt a tool originally developed for the Department of Human Services to perform sentiment analysis in real time using social media data.

“We’re not so much interested in the sentiment towards the Treasury brand, but we are asking what sentiment analysis could we do in terms of broader economics across cost-of-living and shopping prices and such,” Alexander says.

“If we can compare that with real time or lead indicators that come out of social media, we can see if there is a correlation between what people are saying and what we are seeing in these lag indicators as they come through.”

The goal is to be able to provide better data to government in relation to trends that may assist with policy setting. He cautions however

that it is early days for the project, with participation stretching back only a couple

of months, and no actual results delivered as yet. Ultimately however he feels that

such initiatives may assist in Treasury’s broader role of growing the economic

wellbeing of Australia.“These are things that Treasury

is thinking about, and if we can get real time data that may help,” Alexander says. “I think it is a

real positive for government. We now know that there are

tools we can use where if we can grab all this data we can get something useful.

“The biggest change is the cultural, as you’ve got a kind of bricks-and-mortar thinking that you’ve got to break. Big data, data analytics, data science – these things

a B i G - d a T a c a l l T o a c T i o n

The extent of the government’s snowballing support for big-data analysis has become clear not only from successful early work by government agencies, but by the very vocal and explicit support for big-data investments from the highest echelons of government.

Senator Stephen Conroy – who not only serves as minister for broadband, communications and the digital economy but acts as the minister assisting the prime minister on digital productivity – reiterated this support in opening the AIIA big data Analytics Summit in Canberra in March.

“The convergence of cloud computing and big data technologies is a pivotal development with significant implications for both business and government,” he said. “The byproduct of computing evolution means the amount of data available has exploded beyond anyone’s early imaginings.

“The challenge of creating structures so that data could be used, has been replaced by the use of computing power on unstructured data,” Conroy continued, citing figures from the UK Policy Exchange that suggested better use of big data could deliver £33 billion (A$47.9 billion) in productivity savings every year through improving efficiency of government operations, improving fraud and error detection, and “making further inroads into the tax gap.”

“‘Lost’ data, that was previously unusable and unwanted, now has real and unrealised value,” he continued. “It is a mine of important information able to be tapped…. Business and government stand to generate significant productivity gains through its effective use.

“The question becomes, how do we make the best use of the opportunities presented by big data – and how can we do it in a transparent way that respects privacy and has the confidence and trust of citizens?”

Conroy’s call to action was echoed by AGIMO’s Glenn Archer, the Australian government CIO and a first assistant secretary within the Governance and Resource Management division of the Department of Finance and Deregulation.

As the peak body for Australian-government ICT policymaking, AGIMO has recently turned its sights to big data and, in mid March, released a draft of a big-data strategy (bit.ly/154ylup) designed to provoke discussion and promote agencies’ moves to take advantage of big data.

Although the benefits of big data are incontrovertible, Archer said the policy will also focus on helping government agencies address privacy concerns such as the inadvertent surfacing of personal data through big-data data matching.

“It’s clear that the collection and correlation of multiple, disparate data sources will magnify the potential effect of seemingly innocuous data, which can expose or reveal sensitive information about an individual,” he said.

“We know this could be a problem and need to make sure that agencies think about it, and how to best manage this risk. We need to have discussions with industry and others to ensure that government continues to get it right, and that the community has confidence in our ability to control access to that data, and to ensure it’s appropriately maintained.”

The final big-data strategy is expected to be published around mid-year, with comments open through April. – David Braue


Glenn Archer of AGIMO: Steering the

Australian government’s big-data agenda

big data

“BIG DATA IS GOING FROM KNOWING WHAT YOU KNOW TODAY, TO KNOWING WHAT IS POTENTIALLY GOING TO HAPPEN IN THE FUTURE, AND ANTICIPATE AND RESPOND ACCORDINGLY.”

are serious business. And Treasury is a serious data player and we want to do more with it.”

structured, unstructuredWhile Alexander is excited about the possibilities of Big Data, he is aligned with many other agencies in taking a cautious approach to its implementation. Indeed, for some agencies big data is a doubled-edged sword.

The ABS, for instance, is used to dealing with big data problems – but the collection methods and reliability of big data make it unsuitable for inclusion in many of the services that the ABS provides.

ABS director ric Clarke says that big data represents a significant issue for statistical officers around the world.

“We think there are tremendous opportunities that it provides to statistical agencies in the way they gather data and provide national statistics, in a timely and relevant fashion,” Clarke says. “But we are still looking at how we might usefully apply the tools and techniques that are now becoming popular.”

Today the ABS collects 80 per cent of its data through targeted surveys and the Census, and only 20 per cent through administrative and transactional data sources. This controlled method of gathering data produces high quality results.

However, big data – which can include ‘found’ data sources such as social media feeds – often lacks a firm data provision agreement, and the relationship between those sources and the high quality measures produced by the statistical agencies is problematic.

Clarke acknowledges that the promise of big data may lead to new models that are suitable

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“FOR SOME AGENCIES BIG DATA IS A DOUBLED-EDGED SWORD….THE ABS, FOR INSTANCE, IS USED TO DEALING WITH BIG DATA PROBLEMS – BUT THE COLLECTION METHODS AND RELIABILITY OF BIG DATA MAKE IT UNSUITABLE FOR INCLUSION IN MANY OF THE SERVICES THAT THE ABS PROVIDES.”

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in 2010. Other tools include the Asymmetric Massively Parallel Processing (AMPP) architecture developed by Netezza, which was acquired by IBM in the same year.

Oracle has also released a range of NoSQL big data appliances, combining hardware and software into pre-engineered systems, including a pre-built Hadoop cluster, which SAP is tackling big data through a combination of Hadoop and HANA.

While the technology solutions are still emerging, one factor holding back big data is finding the people with the skills to use it. This issue was noted by, among others, Senator Stephen Conroy – who, in opening the AIIA big data Analytics Summit in Canberra in March, highlighted the government’s role in promoting the development of big-data experts:

“There is high demand for new, unique and highly specialised skills to support work in the area of big data,” he said. “These include the ability to engineer software to work across different storage systems, and the mathematical and machine learning known-how to analyse the data.”

robert Wickham, Oracle’s general manager for Exadata and big data Solutions, says big data hinges on analytically minded people – often referred to as data scientists – who are in short supply.

“And you would probably think the private sector might get first dibs on those skills rather than the public sector,” Wickham says. “So I think the public sector is going to have to do a really good job of attracting and retaining and making it interesting for people who have those skills.”

for specific use cases, as big data technologies make possible types of analysis that would have been too time consuming and, therefore, too expensive to explore.

“Increasingly operational decision makers want to have access to information that may not be as accurate, but is fit for purpose and able to support decision making in a short time frame,” he says.

The ABS has created a big data Laboratory, although Clarke downplays is significance within the overall activities of the bureau. But overall he is excited about the possibilities that big data delivers: “It’s a fantastic time to be in this industry,” he says. “It’s a watershed moment for us.”

Big-data technologiesThe range of big data solutions in the market today is staggering, especially when considering that the term itself has barely been in use for two years.

Many of these tools are built around the NoSQL concept – which breaks free of the conventions of building databases around tables, and is embodied in open source programming models for processing large data sets, such as Apache Hadoop and Apache Cassandra. These enable massive volumes of data to be processed at low cost and at high speed across distributed commodity hardware.

These technologies have been implemented in numerous commercial products, such as the Greenplum analytics platform acquired by EMC

big data

gtr april 2013

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