Enabling Big Data and Data Analytics Impact in the Australian Public Sector

Big data and data analytics have the potential to reform delivery of public policies and services. They can drive innovation, transform government processes, and assist in designing more tailored policies. This paper reports findings of a systematic literature review to achieve a comprehensive understanding of practical applications of big data and data analytics in the Australian public sector. The study treats BDA as a complex phenomenon from social-technical and public administration perspectives and includes analysis of existing BDA implementations, strategies and lessons learned that can be embedded in areas of big data application in public policy delivery for creating socio-economic value. BDA has shown promising results in improving efficiencies and effectiveness of tasks of novel policy fields (e.g., COVID-19 management) and well-structured policy tasks (e.g., infrastructure planning and immigration risk assessment) through predictive modelling, risk assessment, analysing ‘what is?’ scenarios and understanding current situations through real-time analytics.