What challenges do you see for data in the year ahead that will have an impact on your organization and on the industry as a whole?
We see our business model at The Data Lodge (virtual, train-the-trainer, community-based) as being aligned with the way of the future! The way we support the emerging field of data literacy program development is agile, scalable, abundance-oriented and full of curiosity. We know that this field of data literacy/fluency is still forming, and with that comes fragmentation and confusion for our clients. We see this as year two-to-three of a ten-year movement – and we intend to stay in our lane of being the “home base” (pun intended) for pioneering data literacy program development.
Have you set out a vision for data? If so, what is it aiming for and does it embrace the whole organization or just the data function?
Our point of view on data is that it is pervasive – and that one just needs to put on their “data glasses” to see it. It’s rare to find a business process, customer experience or personal life moment that isn’t infused with data. With that comes the need for processing that data, deriving insights, delivering augmented experiences to drive well-informed decisions and the need to act responsibly (understanding ethics, bias and privacy of the data that persists across our lives). This is not longer an IT thing, a data function thing or even just a work thing – data is a life thing and the sooner we get comfortable with it, the more we can harness its power and protect against its unintended consequences. Our view? That starts with data literacy as the new shared literacy and language of our times.
Have you been able to fix the data foundations of your organization, particularly with regard to data quality?
Given that we are a lean operation at The Data Lodge and less than four years old, we have the luxury of building our systems to scale and we leverage the power of highly integrated and scalable digital platforms. Having said that, we are always asking ourselves – where do we need to guard against data quality issues in our own operations? Where can we gather and use data to our benefit in how we serve our clients, or work smarter?