The Emerging Power of Big Data

New America Foundation Report on the Chicago experience of using big data: “Big data is transforming the commercial marketplace but it also has the potential to reshape government affairs and urban development.  In a new report from the Emerging Leaders Program at the Chicago Council of Global Affairs, Lincoln S. Ellis, a founding member of the World Economic Roundtable, and other authors from the Emerging Leaders Program, explore how big data can be used by mega-cities to meet the challenges they face in an age of resource constraints to improve the lives of their residents.
Using Chicago as a case study, the report examines how the explosion of data availability enables cities to do more with less—to improve government services, fund much needed transportation, provide better education, and guarantee public safety.  And do more with less is what many cities have had to do over the past five years because many cities have had to cut their budgets and reduce the number of public employees in the post-financial crisis economy.  It is also what they will need to continue to do in the future.
“Unfortunately, resource constraints are a consistent feature of the post-crisis global landscape,” argues Ellis.  “Happily, so too is the renaissance in productivity gains garnered by our ability to leverage technology and information to achieve our most important public purposes in a smarter and more efficient way.”
Click here to view the report as a PDF.”