Data Democracy and the 3 Other Stages of Data Access

"Knowledge is power" goes the old saying. Even though data is not necessarily the same as knowledge, it is an important ingredient of it. Access to more data gives you the opportunity for more knowledge, and therefore more power. Whether you, as the CEO of an organization, should immediately want to share that power is another question, but while we are dusting off old sayings: "two heads are better than one". So if you share data, the knowledge within your company grows. With more knowledge you also boost the engagement of your employees, increase the organization's ability to act and create an important precondition for innovation. Who wouldn't want that?

What is Data Democracy?

Contrary to what you might expect, Data Democracy does not refer to the way an organization is run or governed. Data democracy stands for making the most important data within your business processes freely available to everyone in the organization. It comes down to everyone having access to the data and being able to understand it. This creates a level playing field for everyone in the business to contribute to the development of the company on the basis of facts and data. After all, people who are well informed also feel more involved in the company's results. And people who feel involved also think along. An added benefit is that there is a good chance this will generate more innovative ideas that move you forward.

Stages of data access

So we have plenty of noble goals for our data. But does it actually deliver anything? To answer that question, it helps to first walk through the alternatives.
Suppose access to data is in an Anarchic state. Here, IT/BI in your organization is not able (in time) to meet the information needs of the business. As a result, loose reports (Excel!) circulate in your organization and everyone holds on to their own version of the truth. Besides the frustration, this brings considerable risks in terms of data security, and it also blocks your employees from reacting to new information.

You may also have ended up in a Data Monarchy. In this state you see great inequality within your organization when it comes to the accessibility of your data. Some departments have access to extensive data and good tools, while other departments see nothing of this at all. This was the standard in BI for a long time: data warehouses with carefully organized data and labor-intensive reports that, because of their complexity and the investment required, were only available to 'the management'. The advantage of this form is that control over the data is very high, but unfortunately the price is that data is out of reach for most employees because they cannot see or use it. This leads to paralysis, because these employees do not feel involved in decisions.

The realization that there is much to gain by doing more with data therefore arose at various organizations, and in an attempt to get more insights from their data, specialists were hired. With specialized data scientists, data engineers, data analysts or whatever other impressive titles, a Data Aristocracy quickly emerges. Here, insights are actually extracted from the data and larger analytics projects really get off the ground. At this stage companies start moving toward truly data-driven working and see its added value. But companies know more than just the data scientist, and real innovation often arises on the shop floor. In this form the shop floor sometimes gets some access to data, but free use for everyone still seems far away in the data aristocracy.

Innovation with Data Democracy

Innovation is "the application of new technologies in products, services and processes, or the development of new products, services and processes"[1]. Therein lies the key: because innovation is unpredictable, it cannot be forced. But it is possible to create conditions under which innovation is facilitated. Access to the right and relevant information is one of the most important of these. Of course, even under the best conditions, it is not likely that everyone in the organization will suddenly start coming up with innovative ideas. After all, there is also work to be done... But it is precisely the daily work that benefits when everyone in the organization knows the goals and how they are doing. Decisions get better when they are based on data; they gain more support when everyone can also see and understand that data. Because everyone in your organization is well informed, there is also a greater chance that the right decision is made without the management having to get involved.

Knowledge is power. And sharing knowledge within your organization increases its ability to act, helps optimize processes and improves results. But that does not happen by itself. To paraphrase: with great power comes great responsibility. We will talk about this "Peter Parker principle" and other ground rules and tools within your Data Democracy in the next blog. For now, we would like to challenge you to think about how data-democratic your organization is.

After reading this blog, are you curious about ways to democratize your data? And don't want to wait for the next blog? Then schedule a no-obligation (online) appointment with Louis to talk it over.