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Data Democracy: The power of data
As you could already read in the previous blog about Data Democracy, there's a lot to gain by freely making data available within your organization. The benefits of Data Democracy are a dream for every CEO. But does this mean you should just throw your company data wide open? Data Strategy Leader Louis de Roo tells you more about it in this blog.
Spiderman
The Peter Parker principle, known from the Spiderman comics, says that with great power must also come great responsibility ('With great power comes great responsibility'). This principle, already formulated earlier during the French Revolution as a guideline for the people's representatives (Plan de travail, de surveillance et de correspondance, proposé par le Comité de Salut Public aux Représentants du Peuple, députés prés des Armées de la République, 1793), is often cited to make clear the importance of the balance between power and responsibility. Whoever holds a lot of power must handle that power responsibly. This is no different when it comes to data. Whoever has access to an organization's data has access to its vital information flows. Played into the wrong hands, this data can harm your company, but even within your company, incorrect or irresponsible use of this data can steer you toward the wrong conclusions or decisions. This raises questions about how democratic you should make your data and how you should approach this.
French Revolution
Back to the French Revolution. When, after the overthrow of the monarchy in France, the people's assembly was filled with new, inexperienced members of parliament, the realization also arose that these people, without training and prior knowledge, couldn't be expected to make the right decisions. Our present-day data democracy is no different. Because the 'citizens' of a data democracy need knowledge and context to be able to draw the right decisions and conclusions from the data they can access so freely.
Responsibilities, then. As a manager, you may of course expect something from all those employees to whom you give free access to your data. First of all, of course, that they understand the meaning and context of the data. That they know the data's limitations, especially when it comes to its quality and availability. You may expect them to know what the source of the data is and how it's fed – or who is responsible for that. And, even more importantly: that they have the knowledge and skill to actually interpret the data. A lot has already been written about this last topic, also known as data literacy. Rightly so, because it's an important ingredient of your data democracy. But well-trained employees in your organization alone don't yet give you a functioning data democracy!
Ground rules
At least as important is following a number of ground rules. Just like in a 'real' democracy, a data democracy only functions if clear agreements are made. For instance, it's very important in a data democracy that not only the source data is available to everyone, but also the analyses derived from it; whoever creates an analysis also shares it with the 'community', so that duplication is prevented. For the same reason, a data democracy also doesn't use disconnected data: exports to Excel or other ways of processing data 'loose' from the source should be avoided, so reliability remains guaranteed. In addition, there is of course confidential data. In a data democracy, all participants know which data has which level of confidentiality, and act accordingly. Not only because of a possible non-disclosure agreement, but also because they have knowledge of rules around data processing from both inside and outside the organization. And you may expect your 'data citizens' to be willing to help each other, with insights, interpretations, or analyses. After all, sharing knowledge is one of the core principles of data democracy.
With all these responsibilities and ground rules, it might sound like democratizing your data is a lot of work. And maybe it is. But we all know the alternative: endless discussions about which Excel file is the 'correct' representation of the situation, beautiful reports on outdated datasets (thus useless), an analysis that was actually exactly the same as your colleague's, and heavy discussions in meetings because the numbers weren't right.
Data democracy
An environment where everyone has free access to the right data, understands and uses this information without doubt about the quality of the source, the definitions, or its reliability. Where everyone speaks the same 'language' when it comes to data, and where we can invest our time in gaining new insights from data instead of in making the right data available. That's a data democracy. Time to get truly innovative!