Show Me the Data

"So many things that I'd like to know
Come have a talk with me
I need a sign, something I can see
Why all the mystery?
I try not to fall for make believe
But what is reality?
Where do we go?
What do we know?
Life has to have a meaning
Show me the light
Show me the way
Show that you're listening"
               

                    (John Legend)

trecho da tesinha: "The quest for transforming the vast quantity of data generated by online interactions into information and knowledge about customers has become paramount for the private sector. At the micro-level, there are several web analysis tools that have become exponentially more sophisticated and offer several complex  resources. At the macro-level, and outside the e-commerce world, “Web Science” intends to understand how the web works through a systems approach - "to model the Web as a whole, keep it growing, and understand its continuing social impact". For instance, from a computational perspective (e.g. semantic web), one can go by analysing how social coordination and collaboration systems can lead to the emergence of large-scale, coherent resources such as Wikipedia, or from a social science perspective, by studying how digital records of network use could be used to understanding the sociological aspects of the Web.

 
In the public sector, the tendency of reorganising and reutilising data with the aid of ICTs has become more visible with the rise of “open government",  a practice that gives civil society the choice to use public data as need and curiosity arise, increasing transparency and political trust. However in this research I instead look at governments and ask, as the private sector already does for different purposes, whether they are using data about citizens' interaction with their governments – for instance by giving their opinion about services - and about their patterns of electronic services use, with the goal of improving service delivery."