If information is the new currency in the new world economy, then
most government organizations are guilty of not using this currency
to the optimum. There are obvious reasons for this –
government organizations, primarily due to the scale at which they
operate – generate voluminous amount of information. Finding
actionable intelligence in this ocean of information is akin to
finding a pearl in the sea. Here is where Business Intelligence
(BI) can play a huge role, and help government agencies sift
through the huge volumes of data to extract actionable
information.
While the potential is huge, not much has happened on the ground
and today, few Indian government organizations use BI to their
advantage. However, if the efforts of R K Gupta, ex-deputy director
general and head, BI, modelling and simulation division, National
Informatics Centre and currently, BI consultant, Indian Council of
Medical Research take off, then one can expect the same level of
agility from government organizations that is clearly visible in
corporates today.
RK
Gupta, is spearheading a unique effort called GITA (Government
Insights through Analytics) – which aims to advise government
owned enterprises on the huge potential of using BI. “Most
decisions in the government are still personalized decisions of
bureaucrats. BI can transform this into a process, instead of being
dependent on a person,” says Gupta. To educate the
concept of BI in the government, Gupta has already presented a
comprehensive whitepaper on this initiative to prominent members in
the government.
Intelligently used, the inputs provided by BI can be used to
guide policy formulation and aid decision making. For example,
during epidemics such as the recent Swine flu outbreak, the use of
analytics can help in predicting the spread of the disease and in
creating mechanisms to prevent the outbreak of the disease. BI can
also be leveraged appropriately in the agriculture sector with the
government advising farmers on the type of plants that have higher
productivity yields according to specific regions. Similarly,
business analytics can also be used to uncover hidden fraud
patterns that are camouflaged among millions of transactions.