Data Socialization – Fostering a Data Culture
What does it take to be a Data Ready organization? All around the world organizations are either prepared or preparing for the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Now, consider this: What will it take to be a Data Ready Humanitarian Organization? What are the data-driven strategies, programs, activities, and frameworks required to support data skills development? And, how do we do implement this on a local to global scale? The recent World Economic Forum conversation on Data Responsibility highlighted the need to focus on helping all staff incorporate these necessary skills. For the past year, we’ve been on this journey at IFRC. Building on existing networks and skills, the data literacy program is taking a holistic view on data readiness. Most data programs focus on advancing the high-end information management / data science skills. These types of activities are occurring across the IFRC and in other humanitarian organizations. The Data Literacy program connects the data curious to the data leaders by building a data culture to support data readiness. We are taking a multi-layered, inclusive approach to deliver more sustainable changes.
Data Socialization was the theme of the first year of Data Literacy at IFRC. Fostering a Data Literacy program in a large global organization is no small task. The core activities were collecting user stories, building with existing ecosystems/networks in the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement, and devising skillshares/content. Data skills are part of everyone’s job. Unfortunately, often the approach this area is in an ‘exclusive‘ manner. Meaning – if the participants are not familiar with the technical tool of the day or the ins and outs of, say, machine learning, the staff are not engaged or may even be intimidated. In order for organizations to achieve a sustainable Data Culture, it needs to be inclusive, uncomfortably inclusive. We focused on building organizational confidence and trust. There is so much potential to collaborate on this shared journey, but it takes time to bring everyone on the journey.
Using the IFRC Geneva office, where we work, we invited staff to participate in prototype Data Skills activities as part of our “Informal Data Working Group“. We invited everyone to co-create and learn in the 1 – 2 hour sessions throughout the year. Humanitarian organizations often work with very limited financial resources. In fact, this program has yet to pay anyone to teach data skills. This doesn’t mean that there are not gaps and opportunities. The potential to meet that need will need more investment in various shapes and forms. Data Socialization – using what we know and what we have already. There is no shortage of talented staff at IFRC and in the National Societies. They bring a wealth of knowledge around all types of data use.
Data socialization is the combination of sharing and widening data skills from the basics to intermediary, while fostering a data culture. Often when people talk about data (eg. Big Data, AI) and technology (eg. tools and infrastructure) there is a focus on the tools, data methodologies, and job roles to deliver ‘data’ or ‘information’ artifacts. This is regularly framed by the terms of the of “find, get, verify, clean, analyse, and present.” While it is true that individuals and organizations have varying degrees of ‘data readiness’, How can we connect the usual suspects with the data curious? Being accessible and building learning pathways for data skills provided the impetus to plan beyond the data products and data science corpus of knowledge. We cite many external resources and invite people to explore their particular data journey.
There are few tactics we employed to encourage a steady conversation over a series of activities. There is no one size fits all for each individual’s data journey. We created ‘modulized’ and ‘self-directed’ discussions and/or activities to serve the various types.
