INTERNATIONAL. In the wake of the deep austerity facing most governments around the world, leaders are faced with the challenge to “do more with less.”

In a recently issued paper, “Public sector, disrupted: How disruptive innovation can help government achieve more for less”, Deloitte proposes an alternative path for governments to significantly reduce costs without sacrificing the quality of services.
 
Intelligence is one of five key areas explored by Deloitte in the paper, which argues that two developments, large volumes of open source information matched with advanced analytics, potentially enable intelligence agencies to provide critical intelligence capabilities at a lower price.

Rapidly maturing analytics technologies — modern data mining, pattern matching, data visualization, and predictive modeling tools — can help make sense of the mountains of free, open source data available today, and apply them to make more informed decisions.
 
The Arab Spring provides a useful window into the power of joining open-source information with sophisticated analytics, according to the paper. Simply aggregating and analyzing tweets provided one valuable window into subsequent developments.

Automated analysis tools discovered that an astounding 88% of Arabic conversations on social media during the first quarter of 2011 included political terms, up from a mere 35% in 2010.  
 
Targeted analytics examining social-media discussions about the Egyptian crisis also revealed that of all of the popular demands, ousting the then president Mubarak was only the fourth most-popular, lagging behind intermediate steps such as ousting the interior minister, increasing minimum wages and ending emergency laws.
 
“The value of open-source information is that it’s essentially free. And, despite the scale of digital information created today, advances in analytics can help governments make sense of the mountains of data and then apply this to make more informed decisions,” said Tariq Ajmal, partner in charge of Technology Services at Deloitte in the Middle East. 
 
Social sentiment analysis capabilities make it possible to predict to the day when a certain country might have a significant public protest or the growth of a political movement. Algorithms, for example, can help analysts use open source to track growing distrust of specific attributes of political leaders and political parties or anticipate an uprising.
 
The four other key areas of opportunity in which disruptive innovation can help government to break trade-offs and reduce costs are:
 
·         Criminal justice
 
Electronic monitoring has the potential to break the trade-off between more prisons or more crime.
 
·         Defense
 
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) cost just a fraction of the tab for manned aircrafts and satellites, yet many provide several key performance capabilities that exceed even those of manned aircraft.
 
·         K-12 education
 
Online learning, or a blended learning environment of digital learning and traditional instruction, may be capable of breaking the trade-off between standardized teaching and the more personalized instruction a student might receive from a tutor or at an elite prep school.

·         Higher education
 
Online learning offers the potential to break the trade-off between price and quality and transform higher education’s basic business model. It allows many of the services colleges now provide to be unbundled, allowing students to pay only for what they need.
 
To download the report in full, please visit www.deloitte.com/govdisrupted

About Deloitte:
Deloitte refers to one or more of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, a UK private company limited by guarantee, and its network of member firms, each of which is a legally separate and independent entity.

Deloitte provides audit, tax, consulting, and financial advisory services to public and private clients spanning multiple industries. With a globally connected network of member firms in more than 150 countries, Deloitte brings world-class capabilities and high-quality service to clients, delivering the insights they need to address their most complex business challenges. Deloitte's approximately 182,000 professionals are committed to becoming the standard of excellence.

For more information, please visit please www.deloitte.com/about

About Deloitte & Touche (M.E.):
Deloitte & Touche (M.E.) is a member firm of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited (DTTL) and is the first Arab professional services firm established in the Middle East region with uninterrupted presence for over 85 years.

Deloitte is among the region’s leading professional services firms, providing audit, tax, consulting, and financial advisory services through 26 offices in 15 countries with over 2,500 partners, directors and staff. It is a Tier 1 Tax advisor in the GCC region (International Tax Review World Tax 2010, 2011 and 2012 Rankings) and was recognized as the 2010 Best Consulting Firm of the Year in the Complinet GCC Compliance Awards.

In 2011, the firm received the Middle East Training & Development Excellence Award by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW).

MIDDLE EAST BUSINESS COMMENT & ANALYSIS

• Top news
• Business News
• Company News