Since EVERY person performing tasks at a (virtual or real) desk for professional reasons works with data, Data Literacy is a basic qualification for EVERYONE with an “office job” and not only required for Data Analysts, Data Engineers, Data Scientists etc. and their managers. (Note: ... as reading and writing are basic qualifications for everyone, not only for those who want to pursue an academical career.)
This been said, I suggest the following definition:
Data
Literacy is the ability of an individual or a group within their rights and
responsibilities in an organization to
- understand the definition and meaning of data
- interpret data in their respective context
- apply data terms correctly and communicate clearly and concisely about data to other individuals or groups inside and outside of the organization
- select, extract, compose, transform, create, and delete data under corporate rules & standards
- judge the quality of data for the potential impact on the purpose of subsequent processes in the organization.
In
brief, Data Literacy is “knowing what (data) you are talking about, what you are
doing with those data and why”.
A Data Literacy program must emphasize educating and sensibilizing
particularly rank and file employees in business units who lay the "data groundwork" by collecting data and entering them into the respective systems, often from
(unstructured) sources outside the organization such as online forms, letters,
emails, messages, phone calls etc.
Organizations need to train employees based on
-
a Business Data Glossary related to the subject area Data Model that corresponds to the employee’s respective responsibility
-
a subject-area / job-task-related Process Model with its technical and organizational measures showing
-
the potentially available sources of data
-
what to do with those data
-
the potential recipients of data inside and outside the organization
-
and make those artifacts available for reference.
