Crowdsourcing and Big Data Can Come Together

IBA GroupMark HillaryCould Big Data help the buses in New York run on time? That’s what one city politician is hoping for. New York City Council Member Ben Kallos has campaigned for the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) to openly release all their data on bus arrival and departure times.Kallos is convinced that the buses never run on time. When he has complained in the past to the MTA they have always suggested that he is wrong. He managed to obtain three months worth of bus data and with the help of some data analysts he proved that the buses only ran on time 58% of the time.The MTA has pleaded that the data is in a difficult format for it to be quickly released to the public so his project has not moved further than this pilot stage, but this demonstrates the power of citizens and politicians understanding how much data is available from public bodies.London has released live position data for their buses for several years now. Anyone can create a Google map like this, showing the real-time position of all the buses in the city.Some of these online maps may appear to have no purpose other than to astonish the viewer – look at how much data is available! However, when politicians start using Big Data projects to help citizens then the value of Big Data is clearly going mainstream and being understood by the general public.