5th International Data Science Summit 2018 concludes successfully

Data Science is an emerging subject for almost five years and it has got different methods and techniques like Big Data Analytics, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence as well as other things. Data has lot of opportunity and prospects as we get a lot of insights by analyzing these data. But there is one thing that needs to call up - which is there are still some kind of disparity in terms of the maturity of different organizations in embracing and implementing these technologies. While few of the internet companies and social media companies are really on that edge of experimenting with these methods and techniques everyday and leveraging them for their applications, other industries are still trying to catch up. 
 

The 5th International Data Science Summit 2018 was organized by Data Science Foundations. The summit held annually offers a platform to bring the industry and academia together under one roof to discuss the advancements in the field of data. The Summit 2018 discussed about Application of Big Data Analytics in Media, Big Data Ecosystem, Standardization efforts - Big Data, Applications of IoT in smart city implementation, Challenges in Big Data Analytics implementations etc.

Surina Rajan
IAS, Director General, Bureau of Indian Standards (Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution)
Government of India

In India and in rest of the world, Big Data has become a major focus for scientists and technologists and with that government policy of promoting Digital India it has become all the more important in the country. Recently, a committee has also been formed in NITI Ayog under its Vice Chairman to develop the national strategy for AI, Machine Learning and its applications. In this year’s budget you might have noticed the budget provisions have also been substantially enhanced. We also have a 100 Smart Cities mission in the country where the seamless integration and exchange of data and its usage for decision making is a foundation for smartness.     

In nutshell we can say that heterogenesis, scale, timeliness, complexity and privacy perhaps these are the major big challenges which are impeding progress in all phases of the pipeline that can create value from data. We need to address all these. I assume that standardization will play a major role in addressing these issues. 

Reena Garg
Head (Electronics & Information Technology) (Secretary, JTC1/SC7), Bureau of Indian Standards (Under Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution), Government of India   
 

The process of standard formulation is the basic concept is consensus based and the standards are formulated by BIS through a 14 division councils with the help of sectional committees which are under these councils. For standard formulation, a proposal can be for any indigenous standard or for already existing international standard which needs to be adopted. The proposal is first examined by the committee and it can be submitted by any individual, organization or any committee member. So this goes to the relevant committee and it examine whether we need to process it further for preparing national standard. After the committee approves the working draft is prepared and it is circulated to the committee members as preliminary draft. The comments are invited from the committee members and then the comments are discussed and resolved. Then it moves on to the next stage where we circulate the drafts for public comments to all the possible stake holders and after the resolution of those comments the standard is finalized and published as Indian standard.  

Wo L. Chang
Digital Data Advisor, ISO/IEC JTC 1/WG-9 on Big Data, Convenor, 
National Institute of Standards and Technology:

Data Science is very important in many senses but then the interoperability between the Big Data system ecosystem is important because we want to utilize all the analytics possible but without the extended ecosystem it’s very hard to use other people’s analytics. In ISO JTC 1/WG-9, we try to look at how can we provide reference architecture so that the data scientist they can build application out of it. Hopefully through the common ecosystem we can use each other’s analytics tools.  

For data science analytics you need a lot of data and in India it has a large population that means you have a lot of consumer and data to collect. It is very important because having this mass of data to not only from data science purpose but how can we really help the industry from the consumer side in terms of products, services. In India you have a lot of opportunity because you have a huge market.       

Vivek G V
Vice President, Process Optimization – COE, 
Northern Trust 

Data Science is an emerging field today. The word data itself is very powerful. We often say that in God we trust rest all we bring later. So from that stand point I think data science is an emerging field. There are so much of opportunity and when we say the word data science it is so much involved, the definition of data science starts from data quality, data governance, Internet of Things, Big Data, even things like Robotic process automation you need good defined data to make a business case. So from that standpoint I think there is a huge opportunity, the market is huge, a lot of areas are still unexplored. It is booming because the investment of resources and knowledge that used to be there to take advantage of it from India standpoint.      

At this point of time we have the knowledge, understanding from our organization perspective. We build teams around data quality and governance which are fundamentals to the whole analytics. We also have started analytics group within Northern Trust which is also successful and getting aligned with industry concepts and the frameworks as well. So I think we are on the right track but still there is work from the standard perspective. 

Ray Walshe 
Digital Leader – World Economic Forum:

India is a growing economy and data science is going to be the fuel required to harness that growing economy in terms of ICT and technological revolutions that are currently happening. So, there is a very fast pace change in technology adoption at the moment. The next generation data science is required in order to position itself well to maximize data opportunity to give new businesses, new business models, and new technologies. These days data science is required. Right across the board you need data scientist who are able to extract from sensors, IoT, warehouse data, aggregate data to get Symantec knowledge from the data.  

I work for Dublin City University, so standards are part of my business. So in terms of trying to get involved with next generation of standardization, I will be working on cloud computing, big data, AI standards. I think for any community or company that is interested in being innovative, being able to do international trade, to maximize the revolutionary technology as they come along then standards is what we are working at and I am a part of it. 

Ujjyaini Mitra 
AVP – Strategy, Head Analytics – Digital Venture, Viacom 18:

Data Science is bringing opportunity for job, innovation, companies etc. When I talk about job, I think every company today needs a bunch of data scientists and therefore people having rights skills because data science is not one single domain, it’s like maths, statistics and computer science, unless and until you amalgamate all the three it’s very difficult to be a data scientist. People who have right skills have immense opportunities. Data Science is going to grow atleast for next 10-12 years.  

In my organization particularly, first thing that we have adopted is all decisions should be data driven. We are trying to cut short of as much of the gut feel based decisions. Second is no silo in the data. So if I have five different business units, all the units, data should talk together. So therefore I have a 360 degree view of the complete business. 

Third is data science, so far analytics was a very much support business. But now in our organization data science is a main frame business department all together. So as a Sales person has a revenue earning as a part of their KRA equally my data model also has a same KRA. So we actually share the profit/ loss of the business as a part of our KRA. Therefore this is a business team and not a support team for the business to run. 

Gautam Banerjee
Managing Director, Business Brio:

There is a lot of data which is getting generated across different spheres of life. So from a holistic perspective every day we are generating tons and tons of data. For a Country like India there is a lot that we can do with data for the social good. So one of the things that comes into my mind is disaster management, when there is an earthquake happens it has always been a challenge to locate the survivors and how to drop food packets. Helicopters generally take contingencies during this time. Now the point is where will be the helicopters will be going, what kind of contingencies will helicopters be caring because if there is a particular area where there are lots of child along with their mothers are there then the kind of contingencies that have to be dropped will be different than the area where most of the males have accumulated.  So these are the things which basically can be tracked through the signal of active GSM phone. So whether you have a data card or a normal SIM card, so by accessing the data at a macro level where there is no possibility of data breach or a privacy breach you can actually understand the movement of people and then the cluster of the people getting formed and according you can plan the dispatch of the helicopters along with contingencies. This was done in an earthquake which hit us in Uttarakhand sometime back. It was extensively used in Nepal earthquake.