Visualising Big Data for Official Statistics: The ABS Experience

Role Of Data Visualisation

Big data offers fresh analytical insights for policy development, regulatory compliance and service delivery, particularly when combined in a problem-specific way with survey and administrative data sets. This is of particular value to governments in tackling “wicked problems” (APSC, 2012), such as indigenous disadvantage, obesity, climate change, and land degradation. Wicked problems are intrinsically complex, dynamic and difficult to objectively define – they are characterised by many contributing time-dependent factors of varying effect that interact in subtle and sometimes surprising ways. To identify the important causal factors and understand their interactions over time, analysis needs to incorporate diverse economic, demographic, social and environmental data, and to move iteratively between the exploration and explanation of data.