Europe - Kroes likens big data to oil, in its potential for jobs and growth

Commissioner Kroes, speaking at the EIT Foundation Innovation Forum, announced that:

we have entered the era of big data.

And this is an opportunity. In terms of economic value alone, this is a market worth tens if not hundreds of billions of euros per year.

At a time when Europe desperately needs growth, this is exactly where we should be looking to create new jobs and new opportunities.

Already today, governments - and the public they serve - are learning that open public data can boost transparency, improve public services and fuel innovation.

Whether you're trying to predict the economic future—or decrypt a foreign website. Whether you're trying to locate a traffic jam or a Higgs boson: big data tools will be helping you.

She identified three ways in which the EC was supporting big data:

• open up access to more data from public administrations within the single market for re-use, including EU-funded research
• a modernised data protection framework to allay public concerns
• funding innovation to build industrial capacity to use big data