Regarding the article “Data collection could stump next wave of predictive analytics," it's a very good article, capturing many instances of data analytics that illustrate the benefits and the challenges in this burgeoning area.
The challenges to data analytics, as noted, almost always involve the lack of standards—either for the data definitions themselves or for the diversity of technology used to capture the data. This lack of regularity and standardization is something data aggregators face at nearly every step of the process.
I want to recast the solution, however, away from the question of “more vs. less” government regulation. More regulation isn't what's needed. Better regulation resulting in standards that every technology company can build toward would help immensely. If those common standards arise from a widespread vendor collaborative, great. But we've waited on that for some time.
