Big Data, Big Decisions: A Workshop for a Research Agenda on the Social, Economic and Workforce Implications of Big Data

Bentley University, Waltham MA

Investigators

Abstract

This project will support a two-day workshop entitled "The Social, Economic and Workforce Implications of Big Data Analysis and Decision-Making" to be held in January 2014. Big Data, the analysis and application of very large datasets, is an important new area of computer science research that has given rise to a number of new journals, conferences and funding opportunities as well as great interest in practice. Public and private sectors organizations of all kinds, including the National Science Foundation, are making huge investments in Big Data in the well-justified belief that innovations in data analytics can bring enormous benefits in such areas as public health and safety, economic competitiveness and consumer welfare. At the same time, history makes clear that innovations do not always realize their intended benefits and that they sometimes have negative (in addition to positive) unintended consequences. The goal of the workshop is to develop an agenda for research on the Social, Economic and Workforce consequences of Big Data to mobilize research momentum in this important area. The workshop will bring together policy makers and subject matter experts representing a range of relevant disciplines and perspectives, including computer science, economics, social sciences, and philosophy. The workshop will be organized as plenary and breakout sessions, organized around four major themes: 1) consequences for citizens and social life (e.g., democratic participation and interpersonal interaction), 2) consequences for employment and economic opportunity (e.g., job availability and quality and access to credit and investment opportunities), 3) consequences for science and innovation (e.g., scientific practices and rewards and the structure of R&D), and 4) consequences for critical infrastructure (e.g., public health and safety and financial system stability). Intellectual Merit: The workshop will advance computer science and engineering by developing an agenda for systemic research to document emerging consequences and to anticipate plausible future consequences of Big Data. The science of the social, economic, and workforce consequences of revolutionary technological innovations like Big Data is challenging for at least two reasons. First, it is inherently interdisciplinary. Second, to be useful, such a science must be anticipatory as well as post-hoc, but criteria and approaches for evaluating forward-looking research are still nacent. Broader Impacts: Big data is growing in importance for many areas critical to society, including health, finance and science. However, current research is focused primarily on the underlying technology, leaving the societal, economic and workforce impacts largely unexamined. The outputs of this workshop will help researchers identify the key issues in understanding these impacts and articulate possible approaches for future research.