Obama Administration Announces “Big Data” Initiative

Aiming to make the most of the fast-growing volume of digital data, the Obama Administration announced a “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. To launch the initiative, six Federal departments and agencies today announced more than $200 million in new commitments that, together, promise to greatly improve the tools and techniques needed to access, organize, and glean discoveries from huge volumes of digital data.

The initiative was created 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.