Requirements for Building a Business-Driven Reference Architecture for Implementation of Big Data Analytics by Public Sector Organizations: A Case Study of Uganda

Abstract

Big Data Analytics (BDA) technology is an emerging desire within public sector organizations. It can be applied to meet the rising global demand for informed decision-making and cost-effective and reliable public services. As a result, BDA has been put forward on the planning agendas of different public sector organizations and governments at large. However, regardless of BDA technologies being widely spread, there is a high failure rate associated with BDA implementation projects in public sector organizations. The paper determines the requirements for designing business-driven reference architecture for the implementation of BDA by public sector organizations, taking Uganda as a case study for developing countries, considering The Uganda Bureau of Statistics, the Ministry of Health, and the Ministry of Education purposively chosen. To accomplish the study's goals, the mixed research methodology (Questionnaire and Mini-literature review) was used. The study used a questionnaire and conducted a mini literature review executed under design science research methodology. The questionnaire was given to 36 Information Technology (IT) and Managerial (M) staff. Some of the derived requirements by the study that need public sector organizations’ attention include; the component for identifying the business process/Use case first for which data is needed so that these business processes generate added business value to the public sector organization in question, need to support diversified processing and analysis (like predictive, batch-oriented, real-time, and stream, among others), need to support high-level/advanced data security measures such as time multiplexing and Key management, component to support low, medium, and high volumes of data among others.