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Thanks to the ongoing digital revolution, our world is home to ‘an unimaginably vast amount of digital information which is getting ever vaster ever more rapidly’. This data explosion has the potential to positively transform work in virtually every field of human endeavor. New initiatives to capitalize on the upsides of the digital data explosion abound–from improving business efficiencies, to anticipating crimes and holding governments to account. Equally numerous are the vigorous debates about how to mitigate the potential downsides of the data explosion, from how to manage growing quantities of data, to how to make them secure and ensure privacy for individuals and groups.

In the business world, whole sectors such as stock trading, retail, advertising and journalism have been disrupted–and in some cases even entirely displaced–thanks to the rise of new competitors who make strategic use of real-time digital data, analytics and service provision to meet consumer needs and demands in more responsive, anticipatory and cost-effective ways. In the public and not-for-profit worlds, the ubiquity and speed of data-driven processes have had an impact on efforts in fields as diverse as the military, civil protection, health, education, welfare and social protection, natural resource sustainability and community development.