It’s been more than a decade since Marc Andreesen declared that software was eating the world. Now, it’s data’s turn — in the government space especially. Data is central to countless government modernization initiatives, whether it be the comprehensive overhaul of new agency data governance, feeding public-facing dashboards, or the training of an AI model. But nearly as important as data itself is the culture that surrounds it. That’s why it’s imperative for all government teams — not just IT teams — to be data literate. In fact, literacy in data is expected to “become a new staple of public policy.”
Because data literacy represents the foundation of truly data-driven culture, government leaders must employ agency-wide efforts to foster it. Successful data literacy is a multi-faceted endeavor — one that must include efforts to educate all government employees on the power of data, in turn making everyone accountable in the shared goal of modernizing operations and, in turn, improving service delivery. Successful data literacy efforts should include ongoing education, consistently exposing employees to new tools, and choosing data projects strategically. Let’s take a closer look at each.
Ongoing Education
The first step to fostering data literacy is ensuring employees possess the requisite skillsets for analyzing and applying data. Ongoing education takes many forms at government agencies. The U.S Department of the Treasury created an online data literacy program, the city of San Francisco created its own Data Academy, and, in Maryland, the Baltimore City Data Academy was integrated directly into the existing learning software.
With online options, employees have more flexibility and opportunities to gain new data skills, which is particularly important considering how quickly technology can evolve. Offering opportunities for continued learning has also been shown to increase employee satisfaction, which can contribute to a positive data-driven culture long-term.
Exposure to New Tools
True data literacy, though, requires both skills and a willingness to embrace new workflows. To reinforce these skills within an agency, leadership may turn to internal data to understand where behaviors can best be changed, and where resources are needed to foster that change.
One way that leadership can facilitate change is by introducing employees to new technologies and best practices. For agencies that are not yet data literate, leadership may benefit from selecting more easy-to-use technologies to help upskill employees. However, for agencies that are already quite data literate, leadership may be able to deploy more complex or large-scale applications of new technologies.
By constantly exposing employees to new tools, data governance and best practices — paired with necessary support — agencies can begin to establish a change-oriented culture that prioritizes data every step of the way.
Strategic priorities
While agencies should prioritize tools that enable data-driven decision-making, there’s no need to chase shiny new use cases for the sake of it. Instead, agencies should follow the lead of the Department of Education, which prioritized essential data projects first. Before implementing any project, it can be useful to survey employees on their existing data processes. These insights can not only help leadership establish robust data governance policies, but can also get employees thinking about the way they work with and capture data day-to-day.
The bottom line is that a truly data-driven culture has the potential to drastically improve service delivery, supercharging efforts to ensure citizens are given the best possible customer service, while also reinforcing data literacy from across the agency.
Michael Shrader is Vice President of Intelligence and Innovative Solutions (IIS) at Carahsoft. In his role, he oversees a team of 300+ employees that supports over 250 technology vendors, driving over $2B in annual bookings. Michael’s teams help vendors penetrate the government market by supporting sales, marketing and go-to-market strategy. This support extends into educating technology vendors on how best to work with government, while also helping government understand how they can benefit from embracing new and innovative solutions.
Michael has received numerous distinctions for his work including the CRN Channel Chiefs Award and the FCW Rising Star Award.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.