State-of-the-art Artifical Intelligence (AI) and data management techniques have been demonstrated to process large volumes of noisy data to extract meaningful patterns and drive decisions in diverse applications ranging from space exploration (NASA's Curiosity), game shows (IBM's Watson in Jeopardy) and even consumer products (Apple's SIRI voice-recognition). However, what stops them from helping us in more mundane things like fighting diseases, commuting to work, or reducing financial frauds? Data. In this talk, I will discuss how one type of data, i.e., government open data which is from governments and free to be reused, can be productively used to drive day-to-day applications that bring about social change. I call the trend as 'open innovations' - a confluence of open data (e.g., Data.gov, data.gov.in) and analytical techniques that are accessible over the web via open APIs with semantics (e.g., Open 311). We will illustrate how this can help bring increased benefits to citizens and reduce corruption in public services and discuss research issues that can accelerate its pace.

Dr. Biplav Srivastava, Senior Researcher & Master Inventor, IBM Research and an ACM Senior Member and Distinguished Speaker, is based out of New Delhi, India. His research deals with enabling people to make rational decisions despite real world complexities of poor data, changing goals and limited resources. His current focus is on open data, APIs and analytics, and their real world usage in enterprise integration. His expertise is in Artificial Intelligence, Services and Sustainability, and has over 18 years of experience, primarily in research, working with collaborators and customers around the world, resulting in many science firsts and commercial innovations, 100+ papers and 30 US patents issued.