Gill Press argues in this piece contributed to Forbes that while local governments have had some success stories fighting crime with big data analysis, they have other priorities that take precedence.
There are legacy systems to upgrade. There are storage systems to be enlarged. In all, the IT infrastructure for most governments isn’t up to the challenge.
I know, I know. The answer is: The Cloud. That’s certainly not the answer in isolation. Perhaps a dedicated platform-as-a-service regime, where there’s no chance of contamination by colocated customers, data residency rules can be observed and security is within the hands of public sector professionals, may be part of the answer
In short, don’t expect too many government big data initiatives until a lot of other issues are dealt with.