Big Data (BD SSG)
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Big Data Initiative
Aiming to make the most of the fast-growing volume of digital data, in March 2012, the Obama Administration announced the “Big Data Research and Development Initiative.” By improving our ability to extract knowledge and insights from large and complex collections of digital data, the initiative promises to help solve some the Nation’s most pressing challenges. The Big Data Senior Steering Group continues to work with the White House Office of Science and Technology along with several Federal departments and agencies to help further the goals of the Initiative which strive to:
- Advance state-of-the-art core technologies needed to collect, store, preserve, manage, analyze, and share huge quantities of data.
- Harness these technologies to accelerate the pace of discovery in science and engineering, strengthen our national security, and transform teaching and learning; and
- Expand the workforce needed to develop and use Big Data technologies.
For additional information, see the White House Press Release, and the Big Data Fact Sheet.
Big Data Events and Workshops
- The purpose of this workshop was to have focused discussions on future strategies for managing scientific data and metadata for basic and applied research; specifically,
- (a) how to better enable, encourage, and realize sharing of data, both across disciplinary divides and between “micro-silos” within research domains,
- (b) how to acquire, manage, and curate metadata in order to ensure usability and comprehensibility of data over time and between disciplines, and
- (c) how to enable data discovery, access, and analysis across distributed, public, and private data centers.
- The purpose of this workshop was to have focused discussions on future strategies for managing scientific data and metadata for basic and applied research; specifically,
- Location: White House Conference Center
- As we enter the second year of the National Big Data Research and Development Initiative (launched on March 29, 2012), the Obama Administration is encouraging multiple stakeholders—including Federal agencies, private industry, academia, state and local government, non-profits, and foundations—to develop and participate in Big Data innovation projects across the country. To surface such partnerships and novel approaches that would allow partnerships to scale across the country, a series of workshops and events are being planned over the spring and summer 2013.
- On May 3, 2013, the first workshop brought together representatives from industry, academia, and government to learn about existing BD partnerships, make connections with interested parties, and explore future possibilities.
Overview
Big Data is a term applied to data sets whose size is beyond the ability of commonly used software tools to capture, manage, and process the data within a tolerable elapsed time. Big data sizes are a constantly moving target currently ranging from a few dozen terabytes to many petabytes of data in a single data set. – Wikipedia, May 2011
The Big Data Senior Steering Group (BDSSG) was formed to identify current big data research and development activities across the Federal government, offer opportunities for coordination, and identify what the goal of a national initiative in this area would look like. Subsequently, in March 2012, The White House Big Data R&D Initiative was launched and the BDSSG continues to work in four main areas to facilitate and further the goals of the Initiative.
Four Main Areas and their current activity
- Core Technologies – An interagency Big Data Solicitation is ongoing at: http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=504767
- Domain Research Projects –Specific research projects that involve the use of big data and interagency collaboration have been identified. The group is currently working to identify common data infrastructure challenges that would benefit from additional research.
- Challenges and Competitions – A Big Data Ideation Challenge began in October 2012 as the first in a series of contests that will build understanding about “taking diverse and heterogeneous data sets and making them more homogeneous and usable”. The information derived from this series will inform recommendations on big data research.
- Workforce Development – Current Agency workforce development programs that either include, or could be evolved to include, big data training have been identified. Currently, a publicly accessible web portal to disseminate this and other information on Federal resources such as access to computing, networking, and storage capacity, is underway. Information is also being collected on current models for creating public-private partnerships which could lead to new program recommendations.
In the news
- March 27, 2013 - Making the Most of Big Data
Aiming to make the most of the explosion of Big Data and the tools needed to analyze it, the Obama Administration announced a "National Big Data Research and Development Initiative" on March 29, 2012. As we enter the second year of the Big Data Initiative, the Administration is encouraging multiple stakeholders including federal agencies, private industry, academia, state and local government, non-profits, and foundations, to develop and participate in Big Data innovation projects across the country.
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), NSF, and other agencies in the Networking and Information Technology R&D (NITRD) program would like to hear about projects that seek to foster innovation, advance technologies, and educate the future Big Data workforce.
Click Here to Read the Call for Projects
- March 14 (Bloomberg) -- Altman, Groschupf, Mahony, Strawn `Big Data' Value
"Anne Altman, a general manager at International Business Machines Corp., Stefan Groschupf, co-founder and chief executive officer of Datameer Inc., Colin Mahony, senior vice president at Vertica, a unit of Hewlett-Packard Co., and George Strawn, a director at the National Coordination Office, participate in a panel discussion about opportunities in so-called big data services. Bloomberg's Michael Nelson moderates the panel at the Bloomberg Link Big Data Conference in Washington. (Source: Bloomberg)"
Presentations
- Presentation and discussion with Professor Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld. Professor Cutcher-Gershenfeld will be presenting information on the NSF EarthCube initiative including stakeholder survey data (approximately 850 responses). For more info click here
