Data literacy - Insights from Industry

I had the great pleasure to welcome Data and Analytics enthusiasts to our first in person TDWI (Transforming Data with Intelligence) event in over two years on the 23rd June 2022. 
 
The session provided a great opportunity to connect, with students, data and analytics professional, and interested business stakeholders across a range of industries, to share experiences and expertise on the topic of Data Literacy. An event like this would not be possible without the wonderful support from the TDWI board and sponsorship from the University of Technology Sydney, Enterprise Learning Unit, Data Analytics and Insights Unit and the amazing facilities at the UTS Business School. 
 
Our fantastic panellists 

Angela Kim, Director Data Analytics & AI– Deloitte, Amar Poddatooru, Head of Data and Technology – Australian Ethical Investments,
Josh Hayward, Head Strategy Management, Cricket NSW,
Fiona Anson, Head Enterprise Learning and Future Work,

discussed and provided insights into a range of initiatives and opportunities to enhance data literacy in your organisation. Some of the session insights. 

Data literacy is an enterprise capability - to enable data driven decisions, skills and capabilities must be embedded throughout your organisation and extend beyond just your data and Analytics teams. 

Literacy across the Data lifecycle the need for literacy spans the entire data lifecycle and as we build data products, what you see via the reports, dashboards or Artificial Intelligence (AI) outputs is dependent on the way data is captured, stored, managed, modelled and visualised. Improving literacy across the data lifecycle is a shared responsibility that is the key to building TRUST and ensure the ethical use of data.

Data is another language – We are not all fluent in data but by working together in small teams sharing different perspectives we can aim to achieve consistency in our understanding and be aware of the risks associated with using data incorrectly creating unintended consequences and lead to poor decisions

Attracting Talent – is difficult and organisation are considering new approaches to attract talent and seeking to work closer with Universities to provide opportunities for students to work on real live problems and projects and are seeing some real positive results 

A need to develop new skills - with staff shortages and increasing demand for Data, Analytics and AI professionals, organisations are seeking and actively providing opportunities for existing staff to developnew skills (reskill) in emerging areas through the use of short courses or customised enterprise learning offerings. https://open.uts.edu.au/for-your-organisation/

Emerging and future skills, Data leaders are ensuring teams are developing the future skills to succeed, not limited to problem solving, critical thinking, story-telling, engaging stakeholders, making decision, in addition to ensuring technical proficiency.

Final Thoughts…

 
The session highlighted the importance of developing your existing staff with the skills to succeed, bringing the whole organisation on the data literacy journey and to ensure you consider ways to build a community that considers the importance of data across the whole data lifecycle. 

If you would like to learn more about how you can adopt some novel approaches, as above or share your thoughts please do so.
Please stay tuned for future events at TDWI Australia.