The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the National Science Foundation Present: Challenges and Opportunities in Big Data

On Thursday 29 March 2012 from 2:00pm to 3:30pm EDT the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) will hold an event focused on “Big Data” Research and Development. Federal government science heads from OSTP, NSF, NIH, DoE, DoD, DARPA and USGS will outline how their agencies are engaged in Big Data research. The event will also include a discussion by a panel of thought leaders from academia and industry, moderated by Steve Lohr of the New York Times.

Our view: This event will be important for many reasons. Here is what to expect:

Although scientists and technical leaders are the primary participants, all who are participating are also masters at explaining things in plain english. So this will be a GREAT event for those who would like to learn how to explain Big Data concepts.
This type of evolution can be very helpful to enhancing cross-government sharing of lessons learned and concepts. I believe this will be very positive.
This initiative will discuss R&D activities. Although at a high level, federal R&D focus is usually expressed in terms of frameworks and broad goals, these goals normally translate into budgets so the research community outside of the government should really pay attention.
You will be proud of the people speaking at this event. These government servants are smart people doing good things.

Would you like to watch this event? Thanks to the miracles of the modern science you can watch this event right from your web browser. It will be webcast live from: http://live.science360.gov/bigdata/

We will be watching here and will capture salient points for summarizing here and in the Government Big Data Newsletter.