2. Big Data and Analytics for Government Innovation

This chapter discusses the transformation of the public service provision model due to big data, and in particular due to public engagement in the context of open government initiatives. We outline the changing role of governments in societies, and the technological enablement towards direct online democracy and active citizen engagement, as well as the utilization of big data enabled governance as a competitive advantage for attracting resources and talent to maintain a global smart megacity status. To this end, this chapter discusses the utilization of (a) new sources of data, such as Crowdsourcing, Internet of Things, (b) engage public talent, (c) institutionalize private–public partnerships and (d) seeks for new models of value-for-money public provision, but also the challenges that big data present us with respect to data ownership, data quality, privacy, civil liberties, and equality, as well as public sector’s ability to attract big data analyst talent. We demonstrate different aspects of this discussion through two case studies: Barcelona Smart City and Haiti’s emergency support during the 2010 earthquake disaster.