Unlocking the "Dark Data" of Policy Research: A €2 Billion Problem

Your organization is sitting on a goldmine. You just can't find the map.

We call this "dark data"—institutional knowledge that is collected, processed, and stored, but never used for insight. In 2024, reports indicated that as much as 55% to 73% of enterprise data is dark. It sits in SharePoint folders, forgotten email threads, and archived PDFs.

The High Cost of Amnesia

This isn't just a storage issue; it's a financial hemorrhage. Keeping this unused data costs organizations an estimated €2 billion monthly worldwide. But the opportunity cost is even higher.

For a think tank or government agency, "dark data" represents millions of dollars in sunk research costs. You paid brilliant minds to write reports in 2019 that are relevant to today's crisis—but because they are locked in a PDF on a server, they might as well not exist. You are effectively paying to reinvent the wheel every single week.

From Archive to "Context Memory"

The goal of modern knowledge management is to act as an Institutional Memory Engine. It isn't about "search"; it's about retrieval.

By indexing your "cold" data into a semantic knowledge base, you reactive it. Suddenly, a policy brief from three years ago becomes part of the active context for today's decision. You stop treating your archive like a graveyard and start treating it like a brain.

Don't let your policy reports PDF library become a digital landfill. Light it up.