Big Data, Big ‘Patil’, Big Boost

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By Soumitra Bose/Mukesh Kumar Sinha

PRELUDE : Big Data is a major topic of discussion across a number of fields, including management and marketing, scientific research, national security, government transparency and open data. Both public and private sectors are making increasing use of Big Data analytics. The ICO is interested specifically in the data protection and privacy risks posed by big data. This is an area in which the capabilities of the technology and the range of potential applications are evolving rapidly and there is ongoing discussion of the implications of Big Data. The aim is to ensure that the different privacy risks of big data are considered along with the benefits of Big Data.

It is ‘their’ belief that the emerging benefits of Big Data will be sustained by upholding key data protection principles and safeguards.

BEHIND CURTAIN : May 1, 2014.

DEAR MR. PRESIDENT:

We are living in the midst of a social, economic, and technological revolution. How we communicate, socialize, spend leisure time, and conduct business has moved onto the Internet. The Internet has in turn moved into our phones, into devices spreading around our homes and cities, and into the factories that power the industrial economy. The resulting explosion of data and discovery is changing our world. In January, you asked us to conduct a 90-day study to examine how Big Data will transform the way we live and work and alter the relationships between government, citizens, businesses, and consumers. This review focuses on how the public and private sectors can maximize the benefits of big data while minimizing its risks. It also identifies opportunities for Big Data to grow our economy, improve health and education, and make our nation safer and more energy efficient. While Big Data unquestionably increases the potential of government power to accrue unchecked, it also hold within it solutions that can enhance accountability, privacy, and the rights of citizens. Properly implemented, Big Data will become an historic driver of progress, helping our nation perpetuate the civic and economic dynamism that has long been its hallmark. Big data technologies will be transformative in every sphere of life. The knowledge discovery they make possible raises considerable questions about how our framework for privacy protection applies in a big data ecosystem. Big Data also raises other concerns. A significant finding of this report is that big data analytics have the potential to eclipse longstanding civil rights protections in how personal information is used in housing, credit, employment, health, education, and the marketplace. Americans’ relationship with data should expand, not diminish, their opportunities and potential. We are building the future we will inherit. The United States is better suited than any nation on earth to ensure the digital revolution continues to work for individual empowerment and social good. We are pleased to present this report’s recommendations on how we can embrace Big Data technologies while at the same time protecting fundamental values like privacy, fairness, and self-determination. We are committed to the initiatives and reforms it proposes. The dialogue we set in motion today will help us remain true to our values even as big data reshapes the world around us.

— JOHN PODESTA PENNY; PRITZKER ERNEST J. MONIZ, Counselor to the President; Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker, Secretary of Energy Earnest J Moniz, John Holdren,  Director, Office of Science & Technology Policy Director, JEFFREY ZIENTS, National Economic Council.

FALLOUT : Dhanurjay ‘DJ’ Patil named U.S. government’s Chief Data Scientist.

WASHINGTON, DC: The White House has named Dhanurjay “DJ” Patil as “Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Data Policy and Chief Data Scientist” in the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy.

According White House, as Chief Data Scientist, Patil will help shape policies and practices to help the U.S. remain a leader in technology and innovation, foster partnerships to help responsibly maximize the nation’s return on its investment in data, and help to recruit and retain the best minds in data science to join us in serving the public.

Patil will also work on the administration’s “Precision Medicine Initiative,” which focuses on utilizing health care data to provide clinicians with new tools and knowledge to best treat their patients.

Prior to joining president Barack Obama’s administration, Patil fostered his career as a data scientist — a term he helped coin — in the public and private sectors and in academia. Most recently, he served as the Vice President of Product at RelateIQ, which was acquired by Salesforce.

Patil also held positions at LinkedIn, Greylock Partners, Skype, PayPal, and eBay. Prior to his work in the private sector, DJ worked at the Department of Defense, where he “directed new efforts to bridge computational and social sciences in fields like social network analysis to help anticipate emerging threats to the United States.”

Patil has authored a number of influential articles and books explicating the potential applications of data science, and holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the University of California, San Diego, as well as a PhD in applied mathematics from the University of Maryland College Park.

A Memo to the American People from U.S. Chief Data Scientist Dr. DJ Patil

Ed. note: This is cross-posted on Medium.

Memorandum: Unleashing the Power of Data to Serve the American People
To: The American People
From: Dr. DJ Patil, Deputy U.S. CTO for Data Policy and Chief Data Scientist
Date: February 20, 2015

Overview: What Is Data Science, and Why Does It Matter?

The data age has arrived. From crowd-sourced product reviews to real-time traffic alerts, “big data” has become a regular part of our daily lives. In 2013, researchers estimated that there were about 4 zettabytes of data worldwide: That’s approximately the total volume of information that would be created if every person in the United States took a digital photo every second of every day for over four months! The vast majority of existing data has been generated in the past few years, and today’s explosive pace of data growth is set to continue. In this setting, data science — the ability to extract knowledge and insights from large and complex data sets — is fundamentally important.

While there is a rich history of companies using data to their competitive advantage, the disproportionate beneficiaries of big data and data science have been Internet technologies like social media, search, and e-commerce. Yet transformative uses of data in other spheres are just around the corner. Precision medicine and other forms of smarter health care delivery, individualized education, and the “Internet of Things” (which refers to devices like cars or thermostats communicating with each other using embedded sensors linked through wired and wireless networks) are just a few of the ways in which innovative data science applications will transform our future.

The Obama administration has embraced the use of data to improve the operation of the U.S. government and the interactions that people have with it. On May 9, 2013, President Obama signed Executive Order 13642, which made open and machine-readable data the new default for government information. Over the past few years, the Administration has launched a number of Open Data Initiatives aimed at scaling up open data efforts across the government, helping make troves of valuable data — data that taxpayers have already paid for — easily accessible to anyone. In fact, I used data made available by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to improve numerical methods of weather forecasting as part of my doctoral work. So I know firsthand just how valuable this data can be — it helped get me through school!

Given the substantial benefits that responsibly and creatively deployed data can provide to us and our nation, it is essential that we work together to push the frontiers of data science. Given the importance this Administration has placed on data, along with the momentum that has been created, now is a unique time to establish a legacy of data supporting the public good. That is why, after a long time in the private sector, I am returning to the federal government as the Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Data Policy and Chief Data Scientist.

Organizations are increasingly realizing that in order to maximize their benefit from data, they require dedicated leadership with the relevant skills. Many corporations, local governments, federal agencies, and others have already created such a role, which is usually called the Chief Data Officer (CDO) or the Chief Data Scientist (CDS). The role of an organization’s CDO or CDS is to help their organization acquire, process, and leverage data in a timely fashion to create efficiencies, iterate on and develop new products, and navigate the competitive landscape.

The Role of Mine as  First-Ever U.S. Chief Data Scientist

Similarly, my role as the U.S. CDS will be to responsibly source, process, and leverage data in a timely fashion to enable transparency, provide security, and foster innovation for the benefit of the American public, in order to maximize the nation’s return on its investment in data.

So what specifically am I here to do? As I start, I plan to focus on these four activities:

Providing vision on how to provide maximum social return on federal data.

Creating nationwide data policies that enable shared services and forward-leaning practices to advance our nation’s leadership in the data age.

Working with agencies to establish best practices for data management and ensure long-term sustainability of databases.

Recruiting and retaining the best minds in data science for public service to address these data science objectives and act as conduits among the government, academia, and industry.

As I work to fulfill these duties across the Administration, I’ll be focusing on several priority areas, including:

Precision medicine. Medical and genomic data provides an incredible opportunity to transition from a “one-size-fits-all” approach to health care towards a truly personalized system, one that takes into account individual differences in people’s genes, environments, and lifestyles in order to optimally prevent and treat disease. We will work through collaborative public and private efforts carried out under the President’s new Precision Medicine Initiative to catalyze a new era of responsible and secure data-based health care.

Usable data products. The President’s Executive Order 13642 on machine-readable data gives us a tremendous opportunity to productively connect unique data sets. The challenge is that open data is necessary, but not always sufficient, to create value and drive innovation. For example, the binary 0s and 1s that allow a computer to generate an MRI are of little use to a patient — it is the computationally rendered MRI image that communicates the information locked inside of that binary data. We will work to deliver not just raw datasets, but also value-added “data products” that integrate and usefully present information from multiple sources.

Responsible data science. We will work carefully and thoughtfully to ensure data science policy protects privacy and considers societal, ethical, and moral consequences.

Data will continue to transform the way we live and work. I am eager to get started as the first U.S. CDS, and I look forward to providing regular updates on our progress.

Dr. DJ Patil now  is Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Data Policy and Chief Data Scientist in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy

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