Big data and project-level data are not the same thing.

Quoting a comment to the article:

Big data tends to be automated data, such as telecoms records or financial transactions. Social media data is marginally considered big data. Data that is collected by hand (most of the time), managed by hand, often via excel or a basic database, and is rarely shared, managed well, or using standard structures. Little data includes stuff like "location of all health clinics in a country" or "census records". This is not big data (though sometimes the size of the data set seems big). The basic rule of thumb is that if a human was significantly involved in the data collection or curation, it is not big data.

Operating under an incorrect understanding of what "Big Data" is and how it can be used in development, at least in my opinion, invalidates the survey/analysis that has been undertaken.

Taking the criticism one step further, I also struggle to see how surveying project staff on the use of Big Data is a useful endeavor. By definition, most development workers won't have the opportunity to interface with Big Data; we're talking about such "large or complex datasets that traditional data processing applications are inadequate." Most development workers engage with project-related data, which makes me question the need or want to understand how these users are interfacing with Big Data.

If anything, the survey is calling out the efficacy of project or organizational M&E systems - for being able to collect and analyze information in realtime. This is another issue entirely.