Page 50 - FCW, August 2017

Bookshelf
Analytics as the new grail
A book from the SAS Institute offers practical steps for using data to deliver better government
BY BEN BERLINER
The federal government is taking big steps to share information
and make data more freely available. Thanks to legislation
like the Digital Accountability
and Transparency Act, agencies are now required to post standardized spending data on
the USASpending.gov site. Other initiatives, like the Government Publishing Office’s GovInfo.gov, let citizens use full-text searching and metadata to sift through decades of digitized content.
It seems as though we are entering a new chapter of open data. But what exactly can agencies do with all their data? How do citizens and public officials make the most of this unprecedented level of access to information?
According to “A Practical Guide to Analytics for Governments: Using Big Data for Good,” analytics allow the government to use “data as a flashlight, not as a hammer.”
The book, which was produced by the team at the SAS Institute and published by Wiley, celebrates information sharing and the wide range of data available at the municipal level in particular — such as smart streetlights that also collect information on pedestrian traffic and rail equipment outfitted with sensors so that repairs can be made as needed rather than on a maintenance schedule. That’s an
innovation that Washingtonians inconvenienced by D.C. Metro’s months of SafeTrack repairs might envy.
The authors write that overlaying municipal code enforcement with data on police activity has revealed unexpected correlations between property neglect and crime, and having
studied algebra in high school has been connected to markedly higher income achievement later in life.
Armed with insights from shared data, officials in Arizona’s Pinal County used analytics to better understand the health data they were collecting and find ways to better protect residents from heat stroke. Investigators
were surprised to discover that the highest threat of heat-related illness was not found among the elderly, as had been expected, but instead among young people in the county. That insight allowed officials to better target their efforts.
Small agencies can benefit from analytics as much as larger ones. The book’s authors make the case that smaller cities might be best positioned to take advantage of technology advances because there is “less infrastructure to retrofit.” Only 300 U.S. cities have populations that exceed 100,000, so the opportunities for data- driven innovation are substantial, they add.
The authors also cite state- level open-data success stories, especially North Carolina, which used a new visual analytics tool to open its 2017 budget for public scrutiny.
But more important than making data available, the authors argue, is recognizing the challenge of blending all that data for analysis. After all, “typical government IT projects are built in a siloed approach,” which means that although agencies have torrents of data, often not a drop is shared.
For instance, teachers are not given the opportunity to proactively provide remedial attention to students, and police
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August 2017 FCW.COM