Alan Turing's lasting legacy for UK IT market

The Alan Turing Institute for Data Science will have lasting implications for the UK tech sector, argues WANdisco's David Richards

Alan Turing is rightly heralded as a lifesaver and a hero. His pioneering work at Bletchley Park was instrumental in helping the Allies crack the Nazis' Enigma code, changing the course of history and bringing about a speedier end to World War II.

It is no exaggeration to say that his contributions shaped the path of computer science. He is a personal hero of mine, so much so that one of our offices is called Turing and my house Bletchley. But a somewhat grander tribute to the great man is expected to have long-lasting implications for the UK's burgeoning technology sector.

First announced as part of the 2014 Budget, the Alan Turing Institute for Data Science looks set to play a prominent part in the government's plans for long-term economic growth. In partnership with universities across the country, it is designed to provide a home for big-data analytics in the UK, one that will support research methods for the collation, organisation and analysis of data to better serve the needs of the private and public sectors.

Big data technologies enable vast swathes of data from a diverse array of sources to be aggregated and filtered, with irrelevant information removed along the way. What's behind it? It's simple dollars and cents. The annual IT budget of an organisation grows at an average rate of five per cent, but the annual growth of digital storage is at 60 per cent. In practice, this means that companies are becoming increasingly unable to store the information they need to: we're simply producing too much data, too quickly.

Named as one of the "eight great technologies" by David Willetts, then minister for universities and science, big-data technologies are expected to add £216bn to the UK's economy over the next two years and create a further 58,000 jobs.

Late last month, Vince Cable announced the five universities selected to lead the institute – Cambridge, Edinburgh, Oxford, Warwick and UCL – as the first confirmed partners. He said it was the government's ambition for the institute to attract the very best minds and "break new boundaries", and Westminster has already committed £42m for the first five years of the project.

We hear much about how big data has the tremendous potential to bring change and overhaul traditional practices across industries, from financial services and utilities to consumer electronics and healthcare, but what does this mean in practice?

Take the banking sector, where the impact of the financial crisis and subsequent scandals in the interbank and foreign exchange markets mean that regulators the world over are scrutinising the sector like never before.

Many have been hit with record fines as a result: JP Morgan, UBS and Credit Suisse were recently handed a €93m (£68.6m) fine, while Barclays has amassed penalties of more than $1.77bn over the past five years alone.

So stringent are the demands of regulators that almost everything that happens on and around the trading floor – from phone conversations to emails, to instant messaging and social media – is now being recorded and monitored by internal compliance teams, who use this data to ensure staff stay on the right side of the law. This is paving the way for a wholesale rethink about data's potential within the financial sector, where many are applying sophisticated analytics to much larger data sets as a means to better understand specific market and company exposures.

Utility providers are using intelligent devices to accurately track how much power and gas is being used, with smart meters providing a real-time breakdown of fuel demand at any given time. Thanks to the reliable flow of data from smart meters, suppliers possess a highly accurate understanding of their customers and are able to make business decisions accordingly.

On a micro level this can allow them to offer customers a more comprehensive breakdown of fuel consumption than was previously possible, enabling them to adjust prices to match those of competitors while remaining profitable. But it is also helping utility providers better understand how much gas and electricity they need at any one time to satisfy demand, reducing the chance of over-purchasing power from wholesalers in a move that has the potential to save millions – savings that can be passed on to the consumer.

In each of these cases, success or failure is largely determined by the ability to make the most of the information when it's available. In short, big-data technologies are helping organisations do this on a much larger scale by giving them a firmer grasp of what's happening and why. This knowledge enables them to answer questions they didn't even know needed to be asked.

But big data is not only an opportunity for the private sector.

Many have gone on record to say that with the data records of the NHS, the UK has the potential to be a world leader in data-driven healthcare. Dating back to the 1940s, the NHS possesses vaults of information that, if centrally stored, could provide British doctors with an unparalleled insight into patient wellbeing. Having access to whole-population data, for example, would allow drug side effects to be picked up where they would previously go unreported.

Used effectively, it could revolutionise treatments and help the UK take a lead in the bioscience industry. On one level this means providing doctors, surgeons and nurses with faster and more accurate insight into an individual's condition, better equipping the medical team with the information they need to make the decisions that could save lives. It is hoped that such techniques will one day bring about tailored treatment that takes everything from our retail habits to our genetic coding into consideration.

New patterns of disease could be identified and the efficacy of treatments more accurately judged, while monitoring recovering patients' conditions in real time could ease the burden on staff while providing quicker and more effective treatment.

Alongside investing funds and making policy announcements, the government can show how seriously it is taking the big-data opportunity by unlocking the power of technology to create a smarter, streamlined public sector.

Unimaginable quantities of information are amassed in the day-to-day running of our public services. Nowhere is the opportunity for transformation more real than in public service provision, where the application of data analytics can enable the tailoring of our front-line services so they more closely match the individual needs and behaviours of citizens.

Smarter public services would transform interaction with government up to the level of quality we expect to receive as consumers of commercial products and services, while also improving the overall efficiency of government operations. Benefit fraud and tax evasion are two issues that cause a huge degree of public rancour and also cost the government large sums each year. A recent report by Policy Exchange found that reducing fraud and closing the gap between actual tax collected and theoretical liability could save the public purse up to £33bn a year, a huge return on investment.

The government has set out its stall to make the UK the world leader in the analysis and application of big data. A first-class research institute that caters for the industry's needs will enable the UK to position itself at the forefront of data science, and it is now up to our leaders across the public and private sectors to lead the way.

David Richards is CEO, co-founder and president of WANdisco