Working within the technology industry there are some buzzwords which come up over and over again, current one being 'Artificial Intelligence'. 

Before Obama's election as President he promised many things to the citizens of America, one being that if elected, his government would;

Bring your data together and listen to its story 

The advent of digital age led to a new data revolution. Data is viewed as a new high worth commodity that can enable organisations to analyse their current operations, optimise their processes and predict their future offerings. Organisations are now realising the true potential of data but struggling to derive meaningful insights from the data. Not just the private sector, even public sector organisations are struggling and under pressure to provide digital services to citizens powered by data. Public sector organisations have a huge amount of data, right from citizens’ personally identifiable information, confidential medical information, financial information, social security information and so much more. Accessing and using this data poses several challenges to the public sector organisations.

What is Data?

Data is one of the most talked about subjects at the moment alongside Big Data, AI and Robots, but what exactly is it? The Oxford dictionary defines it as ‘facts and statistics collected together for reference or analysis’.  Every time you enter your details into an application form, social media network or membership subscription, your information is collected. It allows other parties to make more strategic decisions when planning objectives around marketing, hiring, product, finance and engineering. Data has been collected for years however, 90% of current data has been created in the last two years with Forbes suggesting there are 2.5 quintillion bytes of data created each day at our current pace (roughly 100 million blu-ray discs). So what has this got to do with Open Government Data?

In the Digital Age, the Private sector is investing in some of the best analytic tools to gain deeper insights to make better decisions. When we fail to interpret the data, the consequences can be detrimental.

The implications of global warming and the sustainability of industries that consume significant energy and other resources have become more of a central concern in industrialised countries with global governments pledging to bring global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions to net zero by 2050. In order to reach net zero industries and companies will need to see where their most significant environmental impacts are, measure and report on them to communicate to stakeholders and ultimately work towards driving improvements. One way to do this is to define company wide environmental KPIs and manage environmental impact based on these.