38 Convening and collaboration on digital transformation
‘No digital without data’ Heather Savory, Non-executive Director and Business Advisor
For Heather Savory, data is absolutely critical to underpinning the successful digital transformation of an organization, but too often it is treated as a ‘poor relation’.
“I consistently feel the need to
remind people that there are no digital systems without data. The whole purpose of digital is to deliver up data,
whether it’s in the form of audio or video streaming, information held in electronic documents and data repositories, control data or other types and formats for people to use. “Organizations should think of their data as an asset, be aware of where it comes from, where it is stored and whether it can be combined with other
data; it’s only by combining data sets that you can gain real insight from the answers to questions you need to ask. Data needs to be high quality, clean and interoperable. It also needs to be machine readable so it can be used mathematically.”
For Heather the bedrock of successful data analytics is to have a
Heather Savory
Organizations should think of their data as an asset that provides insights into their business
core reference framework. This is a format to underpin data storage which ensures it is consistent, comprehensive and accurate and that it can be easily shared with other systems. As an example, Heather refers back to her experience working to digitize the 2021 Census with the Office of National Statistics (ONS). “The data that had to be compiled for each address was a lot more complex than an address you would write on a letter. The core data was all the buildings and dwellings where people live and their geographical location. “The reference framework needed to be able to deal all the different ways an address can be referred to and be able to include multi-occupancy buildings in one location such as blocks of flats. It took many years to refine.” Heather believes every organization should be applying this rigour to the way they record and collate data; “You get insights into your business if you can share data easily between different parts of the business, but to do this the data needs to be held in a standard format. Unless it is, it’s not much use to you.”
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