Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Special Events: Big Data Workshop

The new availability of data – administrative records, mobile devices, sensors, and many private sources – as well as new processing and analytical techniques, has the potential to transform the practice of science. In the social science context, the new data can potentially offer information for policy-makers that is much more current, granular and richer in environmental information than data produced by statistical agencies from surveys. Yet with the unfolding of new research opportunities, there are challenges associated with making use of the new data that are no longer generated and disseminated by statistical agencies, but can be harvested from many individual public, and some private, actions. Examples of particular challenges for the policy community include: Inadequate understanding of coverage, incentive and quality issues, together with the lack of a comparison group, can lead to incorrect policy advice. For example, overreliance on, say, Twitter data, in targeting resources after hurricanes might lead to the misallocation of resources towards young, internet savvy people with cell-phones and away from elderly or impoverished neighborhoods. The lack of obvious data stewards who can be entrusted with preserving confidentiality, which can result in questions about the ethical use of new types of data. For example, since there are no clear rules or guidelines governing the appropriate use of the new types of data, Institutional Review Boards may hesitate to allow new types of research. Nonetheless, important scholarly work has been done that uses big data in a way that is valuable to policy makers – in areas as varied as finance, labor, education, science, innovation, transportation and development. This JPAM workshop seeks to assess as well as showcase cutting edge empirical work in this vein.