January 28, 2013 - A new study from IDC Government Insights reveals that government Big Data initiatives could fail to deliver adequate return on investment due to narrowly focused technical implementations that take into account only the volume aspect of Big Data and neglect variety and velocity.

The study analyzes Big Data and analytics adoption and investment plans by central and local governments in Western Europe. It summarizes the results of IDC Government Insights' annual survey of government IT and non-IT executives in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the U.K.

The survey also found that:

• Western European government executives will invest first in Big Data methodologies (20% of central government respondents and 18% of local government respondents) and technologies (22% of central government respondents and 20% of local government respondents).
• Governments that want to harness the benefits of Big Data and limit risk need to nurture competencies throughout the organization, ensure executive stewardship, drive business value, look beyond organizational boundaries, make processes more agile for data-triggered decision making, adopt policies for ethical use of data, pilot new technologies, take care of data quality, and combine policy and alternative sourcing to deal with the storage bulge.

"Big Data represents a cultural shift in how government organizations operate," said Silvia Piai, research manager, IDC EMEA Government Insights. "In this new paradigm, data becomes central to gain insights and corroborate decisions and opinions applied to innovate and enhance service delivery. Therefore technology alone is not enough. A combination of tools, methodologies, and information management styles and sources will need to be adopted."

The study, Western Europe Government Sector Big Data Trends, 2012–2013 (IDC Government Insights #GIPP11U, December 2012), is the second in a series of studies that analyzes the results of IDC Government Insights' annual survey. Other studies will analyze IT security, cloud computing, mobile, social media, and enterprise solution investments.