Less hit or miss for governments

By Adrienne Valdez | 6 July 2011 | Permanent link | 0 comments

Trends in Analytics technology

Recently, I attended the SAS Premier Business Leadership Series Antwerp, and I found it smart that they compared the process of making diamonds to analytics; taking rough data of unknown value and applying the skills and capabilities of the resources at hand, producing something that provides clarity in decision making, strength and robustness in ability to make teams confident in the direction they are going, and real lasting value to consumers.

As the uses of analytics continue to unfold across different sectors, my conversations with industry experts gave me a glimpse into how analytics has implications on budget, health, education, and security. At the same time, the constant improvement of technology in terms of hardware as well as software architecture has revolutionised analytics in a number of ways.

SAP has just introduced its own in-memory appliance that combines software components optimised on hardware: the SAP HANA appliance.

The appliance is an integrated solution that enables organizations to analyze business operations based on large volumes of transactional and analytical data as it develops and to instantly explore and analyze the data from virtually any source in real time.

Analytics in Government

In a brief conversation with Jim Goodnight, SAS CEO, we discussed the significant role analytics plays in fraud detection, saving governments millions of U.S. dollars. In fact, a case study mentioned the Philippine Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) getting a 400% ROI in VAT collections with the use of analytics.

“More and more governments are turning to analytics to understand the massive data they collect everyday. That’s where we come in, helping making sense of the data. Like in the Philippines, for example, analytics helped bring in money by identifying which entities are not paying taxes properly,” Goodnight explained.

According to BIR’s CIO and Deputy Commissioner of the Information Systems Group, Lilia Guillermo, about 7 billion pesos (more than US$125 million) has been generated from the process: 200 million pesos uncovered from Bureau of Customs data, 3.2 billion pesos collections from under-declarations that we identified, and 3.6 billion of additional voluntary declarations.

Goodnight also talked about a police force intelligence SAS helped developed which tracks criminals and compiles their data, including history and records, arrests and trials.

Later in the conference, SAS Executive Vice President for Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific, Mikael Hagstrom told me of the healthcare improvements analytics has brought in Asia Pacific.

“In India, analytics help with the analysis of healthcare data; health issues, the affected population, and cause, then come out with preventive measures, in turn providing more specialised and effective healthcare services,” Hagstrom said.

Another Asian innovation Hagstrom mentioned is the use of analytics in education in which the agency aims to minimise unemployment and maintain competitive salary levels. The predictive capabilities provide the relevant data, on which the agency can decide upon what jobs will be in demand in the future and the corresponding curriculum needed for them.

“It’s very hard to put a finger on one area, there’s a lot that probability can address. Analytics is an enabling technology,” Hagstrom pointed.

There are countless uses of analytics in every public sector issue imaginable. We now have social media analytics which agencies use for population sentiment analysis. Another is a definite breakthrough, mobile analytics, which puts do-it-yourself, real time analysis in users’ bags and pockets.