Big data analysis can help companies to identify, integrate and manage useful data from a multitude of sources. It can also help companies optimize their forecasting and modeling abilities. It can therefore result in better and more effective decisions.

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So big data really require a reform-minded government that is willing to change its old ways of operation and incorporate new technologies and new concepts. A pioneer of this sort, according to an official from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, is China's National Bureau of Statistics.

This is a government institution that was closed down, with all its staff sent to re-education camps, during the years of the "cultural revolution" (1966-1976) and that has now become an increasingly important support to policymaking since the beginning of the reform era in the late 1970s.

In November 2013, the bureau became the first central government institution to make an open commitment to the concept of big data.

It started working with 11 corporations in price data collection, including some of the nation's largest exchanges in industrial goods and online retail services. The purpose, according to Jiang Shu, a senior statistician overseeing the pilot program, is to build an alternative analytical base for compiling the nation's monthly Consumer Price Index.

The pilot program is to serve as a comparative system, she said, for the traditional system, made up of teams of bureau samplers who pay regular visits to the marketplaces in every corner of the country to take down the list of their prices.

With the pilot program, the bureau is acting as a trailblazer. It is not only a pioneer in using some new technology, it also shows a readiness to embrace the very concepts and methods that the new technology represents. It is also the first central government office to be in serious partnerships with institutions in the market economy.

In contrast with the progress in the bureau, some 300 Chinese cities are reportedly spending up to 300 billion yuan on their "smart city" programs. While laying extensive cable networks and building citywide administrative solutions, none of them has released a plan for a local open data platform.

As a recent forum sponsored by the Beijing-based Urban China Initiative reflected, China still has to answer many questions before it can develop into a world-level open data power.

First of all, why do government and business entities have to release data other than that which they must withhold? Is it an obligation or just a voluntary thing to do? Or, from the viewpoint of the government, is it a favor to certain interested parties in society?

Second, who decides what data should be open? Who makes and reinforces the standards? Who is to take the responsibility for maintaining order, especially for preventing sharers of data from encroaching upon citizens' private information?

And third, as John Zhang, a scientist-turned-entrepreneur in Zhejiang province, pointed out, the security of a society's general data pool will be of utmost importance in order to prevent either direct cyber attacks or sneaky distortions of data streams.

China will have to define its government's role in big data, according to the viewpoint of academic circles. In his book The Big Data Revolution, published in 2013, author Tu Zipei, a US-based Chinese scientist, urged all government departments, industry associations and corporate organizations to form data governance commissions to build open data platforms and provide incentives to data-based business ventures. At one point in his book, he said: "The ability to manage data is the ability to manage the world."

 

 

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