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The Data-Confident Enterprise: Empowering Colleagues to Enhance Operations

National Grid is building a data-confident enterprise by scaling AI, embedding fluency, and federating ownership across 30,000 employees to power the energy transition.

This is a shorter version of the full writeup of Gavin Goodland’s presentation at the World Congress, which is available to DataIQ subscribers.

At DataIQ’s World Congress, Gavin Goodland, Chief Data Officer at National Grid, shared how one of the UK’s leading energy companies providers is turning data into a company-wide capability. His vision of a “data-confident enterprise” places human confidence at the heart of scaling AI and data transformation.

“The role of the Chief Data Officer isn’t to hold the data; it’s to give everyone the confidence to use it.” – Gavin Goodland, Chief Data Officer, National Grid

AI as a mentor

With a workforce of 30,000, capability development is as critical as technology. “It takes several years for a grad/apprentice to progress through the authorisation steps to be able to perform work in a substation,” Goodland explained. To accelerate upskilling, National Grid built Aimee, a generative AI assistant trained on technical and exam material.

This provided an additional safety tool to apprentices – acting as an additional tutor and information resource.

From governance to glitter

Goodland described National Grid’s data and AI strategy as “going from governance to glitter,” from foundational standards to visible value. At the centre of that journey is people. The organisation has defined three levels of fluency:

Curious: exploring what data can do.
Comfortable: applying data in context.
Confident: creating advanced solutions.

To maximise existing investments, training uses apprenticeships, cloud-provider certifications and vendor partnerships.

Federating with Coherence

To make decentralisation work, National Grid built a shared structure for data roles. Eight “anchor roles” now guide the organisation, from data engineering to data product management with the latter being the fastest-growing specialism.

“If you’ve federated data ownership into the business, you need data product owners,” Goodland explained. “But they need the skills, education and support to execute the role correctly.”

CDO as a competence builder

Goodland sees the Chief Data Officer not as the owner of data, but as the coordinator of confidence. “You’ve really got to crowdsource this job,” he said. “The idea is no longer that a central team manages everyone’s data.”

Federation, he argued, depends on trust, structure and visibility, and importantly, scaling out to the edge of the business with coherence.

Practical Learnings

Build confidence as a capability. Visibility, support and clarity drive engagement more than mandates.
Use AI to accelerate learning. Generative AI can act as a mentor, closing skill gaps safely.
Empower through structure. Federation works only when roles, skills and accountabilities are clear.
Leverage existing investment. Partnerships and vendor training offer scalable, low-cost development.
Enable, don’t control. The CDO’s impact comes from connecting and equipping others to act confidently.

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