Data is the new crude oil
It’s said that data is the oil of the digital era. But it must be refined from crude to consumable to have meaningful impact.
This blog post was published as part of the Data Zetu project. Data Zetu is now an initiative of the Tanzania dLab, a local NGO that promotes innovation and data literacy through a premier center of excellence. For more information about the dLab, visit www.dlab.or.tz. For more information about the Data Zetu project, visit www.irex.org.
“Data is the new oil” is a popular quote nowadays, adopted from a recent article from The Economist that compares data’s worth to the value of global natural resources. While we all agree that data presents endless opportunities, we also have to know those opportunities are not straightforward.
While well processed, analyzed and presented data can be a powerful tool in making strategic decisions, unprocessed data is merely figures or numbers recorded with no immediate utility (the crude oil). But the transformation of “crude” data to meaningful information — and eventually actionable insights — can be complex and costly, hence most people prefer to remain with the crude oil.
The transformation from “crude” data to meaningful information can be complex and costly.
We learned from our Data Zetu listening campaigns that most people living at the subnational level in Tanzania don’t care about data unless it can be used to inform their leaders and the community in general to take action. Data relevancy is key to them; they will not care much if Tanzania’s economy has been growing at the rate of 6.14% or 7.2%. To them, those are just numbers.
What is important is how these numbers affect their ability to bring ugali (stiff porridge) to their kids at home. If you can connect how the rate of economic growth affect their purchasing power in the form they understand (not numbers), then this can lead to meaningful discussion; otherwise it’s another non-issue.
Bridging the gap between data being just numbers to being an actual tool that can be used to empower living at the bottom of the pyramid is key. How do we transform data from just being raw and unprocessed facts, in the form of numbers and text, to information that can used by the communities to affect their lives and develop actionable insights that will allow leaders to implement changes in their community?
Here’s what we’ve learned: it’s all about relevance, clarity, and coverage.
Create data with people, listen more, guide less (relevance). While most of the time we are driven by our personal agenda while collecting data, it’s very important to listen to the people’s needs. What might seems to be very important to be addressed or tackled by us might be of least importance to the beneficiaries. To make data interesting and desirable, the community needs to be at the centre of the design process.
To make data interesting and desirable, the community needs to be at the centre of the design process.
Develop data interventions together with people (clarity). Data is complex, and data interventions can be difficult. When developing data tools for the community the feasibility aspect of the tools is key. While many of us might be eager to jump in and create a dashboard to present the data we collect, that isn’t necessarily that kind of intervention the community is expecting from us. There is a need to be clear, coherent and intelligible with our interventions, and the best way to do that is by working with the community to surface the data and information about local needs that will inform those interventions.
Push the data agenda together with people for those people (coverage). The only way communities will value data is when data is addressing issues of significance to them using approach and tools they are used to. People consume information in different ways: sports, arts, music etc. If we can find a way to leverage these platforms to deliver data, then possibly we can transform data from being crude oil to consumable oil.
Jumanne Mtambalike is CEO of Sahara Sparks, an implementing partner of Data Zetu.
