UPDATED 09:15 EDT / JULY 02 2012

Big Brother’s Big Data: How Governments are Saving Money

Ask ten people at random what the biggest deciding factor in this year’s presidential elections is likely to be, and you’ll almost certainly get the same answer – money.

For politicians, money is first and foremost on their list of concerns, and not only in the sphere of elections. While spending money is what gets the likes of Obama and Bush into power in the first place, one of the best ways to stay in power is by managing money more intelligently, by reducing government deficits, lowering taxes and generally seeing that the economy stays in a robust shape.

So it should come as no surprise that many governments today are looking for ways to help them maximizing their spending – and one of the most effective ways to do so is with big data.

Government Agencies

To see how governments are cutting costs with big data, we need to look a little further afield to Australia, where government agencies are trending towards the use of data tools to enhance their services at no extra cost for taxpayers.

Australia is leading the way in the adoption of applications that can add to the country’s productivity and growth. The government is actively encouraging developers to use its internet resource Data.gov.au, from which they can access everything from the location of Victorian public libraries to information on minerals and mining.

This has led to the development of applications such as the Safe Route project which aggregates bush fire data in the country to determine the best evacuation routes for local communities (thus easing the burden on emergency services), and the graphical presentation “Where are my Taxes Going?”, which is sure to have an effect on government accountability.

See the entire Big Brother’s Big Data Series on Pinterest and Springpad!

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Elections

Individual politicians are also looking to make better use of their money, for more obvious reasons. Quite simply, the amount of money spent by US politicians on campaigning is farcical, and many are realizing that they cannot possibly compete with the richest candidates.

So rather than ramp up their fund-raising efforts, the likes of Texas Governor Rick Perry are actually looking at ways to limit their campaign spending by using the money they do have more efficiently.

Admittedly, Perry is probably not the most shining of examples – his presidential nomination campaign floundered spectacularly thanks to his poor showings in on-camera debates and a litany of errors elsewhere – yet his efforts with big data do merit some applause.

Perry was able to save some $3 million in his failed endeavors by analyzing data obtained through market research, so that he could allocate monies only to those campaign activities that were deemed most effective. $3 million might not seem like much compared to the extravagant amounts being bandied about by the likes of Mitt Romney, but for a cash-strapped campaign, that amount can make a huge difference.

Ultimately Perry failed miserably, but future election candidates will surely be keen to learn from him on how they can best maximize their financial resources. When they finally do, we may actually start getting some different responses to the question we asked at the beginning of this article.


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