From fake news to sustainability – why you should care about data literacy

Eminent 20 Century mathematician Abraham Wald once said, “the most important data is the data you don’t have”. Today, however, in our data-driven world, it is data literacy – the capacity to read, work with, analyze and argue with data – that is fast becoming the new differentiator in data value.  

Data literacy affords new ideas, possibilities, ambitions and datadriven actions. And events of the last 18 months, with the pandemic and its multifarious impacts across work, education and daily life, have heightened the spotlight on its critical importance

 alongside changed expectations. Our lives have become dominated by data. In the UK, the government’s oft-repeated mantra of 2020 was to be: “driven by the data”. While in the US, it was about “flattening the curve” of the infection rate graph.

All this has made data discussions part of the everyday for individuals, families and organizations, raising levels of consciousness and the capacity to ask the questions that matter most. 

This is helping to move beyond a focus on the ubiquity of data to making analytics more democratized, and also bring to bear the importance of communication and data storytelling. That’s important, because all the data in the world won’t help if you don’t have the compelling narrative to deliver it – or not enough trust in how people’s data is being used and how your analytical findings are being presented and applied. 

Consequently, for individuals to organizations alike, developing data literacy is fast becoming a core competency to successfully navigate the world we live in. A world which can only be expected to become further driven by data with increasing intersections of emergent technologies.

For individuals, data literacy can be the democratizer of opportunity, opening the door to new career opportunities and rapidly evolving job roles – especially with the increase in people looking to reskill and upskill, accelerated by the pace of digital transformation driven by the pandemic. From a business and organizational lens, data literacy is a critical component in optimizing the potential of data to enable new insights, fresh innovation and greater value creation. It can help companies to move beyond resiliency, which is often reactive in nature, to a more proactive agility to change.

This is especially the case when we consider recent research by Forrester Consulting which highlights the many data paradoxes that have emerged in the last year, notably:

1. Businesses believe they are data-driven but they don’t prioritize the use of data across the organization.

2. Businesses need more data, but they have more data than they can handle right now. 

3. Many businesses believe in ‘As a Service’ benefits, but only a few have made the transition.

It’s perhaps no surprise that market forces are rewarding those that have become data-driven, which is more than just a question of technology. It is supported by investing in developing a data literate workforce too. But organizations that fall behind in these areas will start to fall behind in market competitiveness, value and the capacity to recruit and retain top talent. The duality of competences which encapsulate data-driven value and data literacy are therefore fast becoming two of the leading drivers for competitive advantage today. 

From a social impact perspective, we see the increasing importance too. Taking Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) as an example, interest in this area has grown significantly. Heightened by the pandemic – and the resultant ‘global pause’ to reflect, reframe and reimagine the future, ethics and sustainability – ESG considerations are moving from periphery conversations, to become embedded and centre stage.