Implementing a Data Infrastructure to Enable Business Analytics in the Public Sector: a case study

This paper describes the initial stages of the process of implementing the data infrastructure required to develop analytics capabilities in a public sector organization. Helfo (the Norwegian Health Economics Administration) is responsible for making payments on from the National Insurance scheme to healthcare actors who submit reimbursement claims. An important task for Helfo is also to prevent and detect errors, and the organization is currently strengthening this capacity though employing data analytics and artificial intelligence. Implementing data analytics entails more than a “plug-and-play” process, and we analyze the initial stages of the implementation process as a sociotechnical change process. As a starting point we employ the CRISP-DM process model and enrich this with additional steps and tasks that was found to be central in the case. In particular, we describe in more detail the preparatory work relating to the technical setup and data infrastructures, and the implications for the information processing routines of the organization more broadly. The case study shows that also the early-phase improvements in data access and utilizing basic analytics capabilities yielded benefits directly, without employing advanced analytics and artificial intelligence. The rich description of the early stages of the implementation process can be valuable for other public sector organizations that seek to build data analytic capabilities

Crisis, restructuring and growth : a macroeconomic perspective

This report surveys the major aspects of financial crises and the restructuring and growth process of economies in the aftermath of crises, and discusses possible directions for future research in this area. The first part of the report reviews the existing literature. The first chapter gives an introduction to the recent global financial crisis starting in 2007 in the United States. Contributing factors include global financial imbalances, monetary and fiscal policy, and liberalization and deregulation of financial markets. The second chapter discusses lessons about financial crises from the interwar years. In particular, it relates events in asset and money markets to problems in the banking sector and the resulting credit crunch. The third chapter reviews the literature on a number of financial crises (banking, currency, twin crises and debt), and documents contributing factors and the typical recovery in the aftermath of a crisis. Chapter four discusses challenges from the financial crises for monetary policy. Partly as a response to earlier policy failures, monetary policy has also used non-conventional instruments to support the recovery of the financial sector. The second part outlines several directions for future research. These include the role played by the United States and China in adjusting financial imbalances, the importance of understanding the interrelation of financial frictions and business cycles, the evolution of endogenous political preferences and sectoral allocation, and the analysis of jointness and the role of expectations in predicting financial crises