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Data visualizations enhance transparency, says IRS official

Providing access to a data set only goes halfway in delivering transparency; infographics and data visualizations are the second phase of open government, according to one Internal Revenue Service official.

“We’re trying to redefine what we mean by data user,” said Wayne Kei, chief of communications and data dissemination at the IRS’s statistics of income division.

Traditionally, SOI data is used by technical experts at the Treasury Department’s office of tax analysis, the Commerce Department’s bureau of economic analysis and the Joint Committee on Taxation, said Kei during an Oct.9 webinar hosted by the General Services Administration’s DigitalGov University.

But the Open Government Directive requires agencies to take their data a step further–beyond the users who can easily make heads and tails of tax data, he said.

“By providing our data in a more engaging way, we can get people more interested,” said Kei. “They can see the value of our statistics and become more educated on what we do at the IRS.”

Engaging with a broader audience is also easier than ever, he said. Through social media IRS is able to interact directly with customers. Social media platforms such as Tumblr and Facebook are well suited for posting and sharing infographics and data visualizations.

Big data to create 1.9M IT jobs in U.S. by 2015, says Gartner

There were a lot of reasons for Gartner researchers to give a gloomy economic outlook at its Symposium/ITxpo conference , especially after the latest round of quarterly reports from Intel, IBM and others. But the picture painted by Peter Sondergaard, Gartner’s head of research, was upbeat in a surprising way.

Gartner isn’t revising its global IT growth forecast significantly, which remains down from the initial expectations for this year. But Garter’s relatively flat revenue forecast isn’t being carried over to jobs, at least in one sector of IT: big data.

Big data, which refers to data collected and analyzed from every imaginable source, is becoming an engine of job creation as businesses discover ways to turn data into revenue, says Gartner. By 2015, it is expected to create 4.4 million IT jobs globally, of which 1.9 million will be in the U.S.

Big data could transform staff management 

Big data will transform the way businesses develop the talent in their workforce over the next five years, according to analysts.

Data analytics has the potential to help businesses make dramatic returns by managing their workforce more effectively, said human resources (HR) technology analyst Josh Bersin.

“This is the next big thing that is going to happen in HR,” he told delegates at the HR Tech Europe conference.

Data analytics technologies have the potential to offer businesses insights into their employees that could have a real impact on company profits, the HR conference heard.