Swiss Federal Statistical Office: The digital revolution is built on data and is well underway : terms
such as big data, cloud, internet of things, internet of everything,
fourth industrial revolution, smart cities and data economy are no
longer just words on everyone’s lips, but concepts that are changing
the habits of consumers and businesses. This digital transformation
started with the first wave of digitalisation: the technical digitalisa-
tion of converting analogue contents and services into digital ones
– without fundamental changes to the underlying processes – that
resulted in the (big) data revolution. However, big data are a data
management infrastructure with underlying hardware, software and
architecture and should not be “taken for museum purposes” only. As early as 1942 the official statistician W. Edwards Deming noted that the “ultimate purpose of taking data is to provide a basis for action or a recommendation for action”. As such, a second wave of digitalisation is needed to enable learning from big data and to generate value from this (big) data revolution for society as a whole: the FSO calls it data innovation. The biggest challenge in this respect is the veracity of the “data pedigree”, i.e. the trustworthiness of the data, including the reliability, capability, validity and related quality of the data, as well as the transparency of the related production process. In a world of post-truth politics and fake news, data veracity is more important than ever.
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