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GITA, a new BI focused initiative spearheaded by an ex-director of NIC can accelerate decision making in the government sector while improving efficiency
By Srikanth RP, InformationWeek, February 8, 2010, 1000 hrs
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, 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.
Super datawarehouses can boost efficiency
A look at the existing government structure suggests that BI technologies can be appropriately used. The administration of the government is well structured and has clear well defined ministries. Each ministry in turn, has different departments. Today, each department has its own data mart. To improve analysis of information, Gupta suggests creation of a data warehouse for each sector, which can hold information of multiple data marts belonging to different departments within a sector. A super data warehouse can then be built which will take inputs from ministries such as say, the Agriculture ministry, the Commerce ministry and the Finance ministry. Specific ‘What-If’ queries can then be run against this warehouse for better forecasting of goals, likely achievements and shortfalls.
As many bright initiatives that started off well but have eventually failed in the government sector, Gupta wants to avoid this by standardizing the concept of BI. This will ensure that all initiatives that are undertaken now are sustainable in the future too.
“To institutionalize the concept of BI in the government sector, I have proposed creation of a BI consortium, a BI competency center and a BI academy that would share best practices and their applicability in specific government initiatives,” says Gupta.
Till date, project allocations have been decided according to the budgets that specific governments have at their disposal rather than being tied down to actual results or benefits. BI can help government agencies correct this anomaly.
How can BI transform different government industries?
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Sector
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Usage for BI
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Healthcare
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BI can be used to proactively fight epidemics as the use of analytics can help in predicting the spread of the disease, and in creating mechanisms to prevent the outbreak of the disease
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Agriculture
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Can be used for providing inputs to farmers on the type of plants that have higher productivity yields according to specific seasons and regions
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Law enforcement
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Usage of Business Analytics can be used to study patterns of crime in certain areas. For example, crime hotspots can be identified and further analyzed if particular crimes are occurring in a certain geographic region and at a particular time.
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Infrastructure management
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Gaining a comprehensive single view of diverse infrastructure assets across the country or the state, allocating necessary resources, and anticipating future needs can be done efficiently through the use of BI technologies
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