Nonprofits Active in $200-Million White House Data Project

The Obama administration is scheduled to announce today a set of alliances with nonprofit groups, academic institutions, and private firms as part of its $200-million effort to harness “big data” in tackling national problems, writes The Washington Post.

The new partnerships include CancerLinq, a five-year, $80-million project run by the American Society of Clinical Oncology, with foundation and corporate support, to analyze the experiences of cancer patients—care data that Allen S. Lichter, the society’s chief executive, said is routinely “siloed” within hospitals and medical practices and rarely shared or “mined for insights.”

The announcements come a year and a half after the White House established the big data initiative to develop ways to use and share the massive troves of information the government collects.