Data for Leaders, Online Discussion Report Back

On 25 June, we hosted our 4th Data Literacy Consortium meeting to discuss data and leadership. It’s a big topic. We see this as the start of a much larger conversation around what it means to build critical data literacy for leaders and drive forward data-informed decision making. 

We changed up the format for this call. Rather than having one or two presentations and short break-out groups, we opted to jump straight into longer breakout groups to discuss three questions: 

• How can leaders support data culture in their communities, organisations, & institutions?
• How can we use data for decision-making?
• How can leaders use data to strengthen their communities and networks?

Helping us lead small group discussions:

• Mor Rubinstein, Product & Programmes Manager 360Giving
• Samhir Vasdev, Digital Development Advisor IREX
• Tin Geber, Social Innovation Specialist, HIVOS
• Jennifer Chan

Here are our key takeaways: 

In today’s data-filled world, leaders need:

• to understand data basics: what is data, why data matters and how to build a data-enabled environment.
• to understand how to support their teams to learn, co-create and work collaboratively to drive a thriving data culture within organisations and institutions.
• to understand how to make data accessible to external stakeholders given the context and culture. 

Organisations & institutions that are trying to lead a community or campaign need to:

• define clear advocacy outcomes to anchor their data strategy. Activities that support the data strategy need to be tailored for their sector and the individuals they are trying to engage.
• back their strategies with resourcing, planning and scalability for complex global environments.
• understand how the data can be used as evidence that will inform decision making within the community.
• Prioritise data standards, reusability and protection to support and protect the community.

Along with some reflections on the conversation itself:

• When we talk about ‘Decision-Makers’, ‘Leadership’, ‘Data Culture’ and ‘Data Literacy’ in general, the conversation quickly becomes abstract. To move the conversation forward, we need to start defining our terms. 
• Part of the role of the Consortium is to discover when and where sharing and collective action adds value and when and where we need to design approaches to data literacy specific to the respective needs of our individual communities / organisations. 

For a more detailed overview of what we discussed, you can read the session notes. Or you can watch a video recording of the large group discussion.

To join the data literacy consortium and future conversations subscribe to the Data Consortium mailing list.