  We present PolicyCLOUD, a prototype for an extensible, serverless cloud-based
system that supports evidence-based elaboration and analysis of policies.
PolicyCLOUD allows flexible exploitation and management of policy-relevant
dataflows by enabling the practitioner to register datasets and specify a
sequence of transformations and/or information extraction through registered
ingest functions. Once a possibly transformed dataset has been ingested,
additional insights can be retrieved by further applying registered analytic
functions. PolicyCLOUD was built as an extensible framework toward the creation
of an analytic ecosystem. As of now, we developed several essential ingest and
analytic functions that are built-in within the framework. They include data
cleaning, enhanced interoperability, and sentiment analysis generic functions.
PolicyCLOUD has also the ability to tap on the analytic capabilities of
external tools. We demonstrate this with a Social Analytics tool implemented in
conjunction with PolicyCLOUD and show how to benefit from policy modeling,
design and simulation capabilities. Furthermore, PolicyCLOUD has developed a
first of its kind legal and ethical framework that covers the usage and
dissemination of datasets and analytic functions throughout its policy-relevant
dataflows. The article describes and evaluates the application of PolicyCLOUD
to four families of pilots that cover a wide range of policy scenarios.
