While Defense and other federal agencies are trying to figure out how to leverage big data, some of the folks at DOE are moving out. The  Department of Energy’s KBase team has set up a way for non-IT folks to analyze lots of information across their wide spectrum of research/lines of business without having to have the data coder chops that is normally par for the course.

KBase is a narrative interface that allows DOE scientists to perform analysis through a pre-coded format, giving mere mortals a way to interpret and filter data outputs and moving toward a new standard in working with lots and lots of scientific output that is not necessarily in rows and columns of traditional databases. The real kick is that researchers can more easily share their results, datasets, and thought process in an interactive, evolving narrative.

The interface leverages some social tools — Facebook for social interaction between team members, Amazon for data and tool sharing, and Google Docs for project collaboration, all with the intent to help-me-help-you evolve your success.

Their primary success to date is around bioenergy — the KBase team highlighted on their website has much background in biology, genetic research, and microbial science — but it is easy to understand the much larger opportunity to share across any kind of scientific research.

This is good stuff and a major reach in the right direction! The “big data” community needs to leverage this kind of process in many endeavors, not simply for scientific research where it is obviously a good fit, but in any area of business, service, government, or data discovery/advanced analytics where the “non-IT” real users are trying to figure out how to use all the data potentially available to improve their mission or business.

CIOs and CTOs take note — this is a great example of what IT should be about!  It enables users across the enterprise to use data, information, and technology to do their job better and figuring out how to leverage commercial and social tools in the process.