Big Data Analysis and Quality Improvement in Social Services

If data can help Target figure out a young girl is pregnant before her parents, or let a a consumer know a particular cut of pants might be more slimming for her body type based on past purchase information and data analysis,  then surely it has a place in improving social service delivery across the board.  The technology is still relatively young, and it seems largely consumer driven as it’s currently utilized.  But that is what social services do, isn’t it? Supply needs to social service consumers?

From every thing to individualized educational plans framed around what works with individual students taking into account that students strengths, learning styles, and needs, building relational databases which are secure yet contain enough data to cut across industries, social services can much more readily document and quantify where the biggest areas of need are, what programs work, what programs need reevaluation and potentianly have a huge impact on service delivery across every sector.

I agree with Linda Tucci’s article “Big data’ analysis is my new best girlfriend,” and can only see  big data as “a huge opportunity, which started in the retail and the business-to-consumer industries, but which” will hopefully spread “to other sectors.”