CRESC Working Paper Series - Working Paper No. 138 - Socialising Big Data: From concept to practice

Our proposal highlighted problematic conceptions of Big Data in popular discourse, including the ‘data deluge’ and the tendency to reduce the term to definitions based on the ‘3 Vs’: the increasing volume of data sets, velocity of data generation, and variety of data sources and formats.2 While we recognised that these qualities make data more difficult to analyse using traditional management and. [...] Similar to the other collaboratories, the roundtables were organised around a series of questions on the topic of Big Data reflecting the relatively new use of such data in the context of waste management and in relation to methodological issues, ethics, openness, policy and behavioural change. [...] Generally this suggests a changing role for national statisticians, from producers of bespoke data to analysts of data produced by others and for other purposes or what is suggested in relation to the distribution of roles in genomics as a change from 16 ‘gleaners’ to ‘action heroes.’ Whatever the designation, Big Data raises the question of the distributed relations involved in the economies of B. [...] Questions What are the implications of national or transnational PPPs in the valuation and legitimating of Big Data as a source of ‘official’ statistics and their role in the formation of a ‘data driven economy’? What are the costs and benefits? What does using Big Data mean for the ‘independence’ of NSI’s in the provision of ‘high quality information?’ Does the distribution of Big Data skil. [...] The final number belongs to no one of the units; it characterizes the way in which the group unity has been attained’ (1968: 93).9 This is a moment in the emergence of Big Data similar to that in the twentieth century in which the state’s policies came to be directed through the construct of the ‘statistical personage’.