In the era of technology, data has proven to be a critical asset of every decision-making that is being made within governments.
Evidently during the COVID-19 pandemic, data is being used to make critical life-saving decision around the world such as identifying hotspots, hospital capacity and available ventilators.
For Sarawak in becoming a data driven State, open data is make available through the official website of Sarawak State Government Open Data.
By implementing a data platform, governments can access vast amounts of relevant information important to their daily functions.
Governments can thrive on data-driven decision making.
Data driven decision making (DDDM) is defined is the process of making organizational decisions based on actual data rather than intuition or observation alone.
In today’s digital era where the society is moving so quickly from one thing to the next, leveraging on data helps government organizations more with the ever-changing landscape by becoming more well-informed, particularly during real-time analysis on areas that needs attention.
This may include sectors such as transportation, healthcare, education, agriculture as well as welfare.
For instance, data can be used by government organizations so that they can have a clearer picture of where allocation is going and why.
In education for instance, data can be used to know more about the needs of local youths to ensure that they are getting the best possible education in order to serve the country in the future.
Before, data had to be reported on paper to government organizations before it was entered manually into a database.
This slow-moving process has severely affected decision-making process as people within the government organization were forced to detect problems based on incomplete information and error-ridden data.
These days however, organizations no longer face these problems as technology has allow them to obtained data quickly for real-time analysis as well as the ability to choose what information to collect in information-gathering technologies.
Aside from that, sensors and satellite technologies has provided the ability to collect data remotely without any data entry on almost anything including environment, traffic flow, water and air quality, health ecosystem, condition of dilapidated infrastructures as many more.
Other types of data such as healthcare records or test score can be reported electronically in management systems and instantly transfer and aggregated for data input and error checking.
This then allows data to be used effectively in building a strong information infrastructure for highlighting problems in a precise and swift manner.
For government organizations, the ability to collect, process and analyse information is vital as it allows them to be more responsive.
Real-time data collection as well as proper data collection and analysis allows government organizations the ability to improve its citizens quality of life, build vibrant communities, and develop a thriving economy.
In addition, data-driven government empowers government officials to spot problems in time to take preventive action.
