Debate: Data science challenges to financial information in the public sector

Digital transformation has grown massively in recent decades and is now hugely affecting all sorts of organizations. Moreover, ‘Big data isn’t just about answering particular questions better, but about asking questions we didn’t even know we had’ (Davis, 2017). The growth of analysable data (structured and unstructured, circumstantial, endogenous and exogenous data) and the characteristics of digital data are challenging established paradigms (Bhimani, 2020). The result of using algorithmic-based technologies (i.e. those developed under the banner of artificial intelligence [AI]), social media and big data in organizations is changing the way decisions are being made, organizational processes, necessary staff competencies, as well as altering the relative power of actors both within and outside organizations (Arnaboldi et al., 2017). There is a real risk that people are going to be making the wrong decisions much more quickly, with less exercise of wisdom (Quattrone, 2016). The recent pandemic context has evidenced these effects (Polzer & Goncharenko, 2022).