Big data is a big deal

"Big data" is a big deal.  The US National Science Foundation has a Big Data initiative.  The US National Institutes of Health has a "Big Data to Knowledge (BD2K)" program.  The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has a Big Data effort as well.  There are lots of cool examples of scientific communities that are organized around data sharing and analysis, such as the Allen Brain Atlas, the Neuroscience Information Framework,  the Worldwide Protein Data Bank, the Materials Project,  and more.  The US Government's current sites include NASA's Life Science Data Archive and the Aviation Safety Reporting System, JPL's Small Body Database Browser and Molecular Spectroscopy Catalog,  and the Department of Defense's Information Analysis Centers.