The Case for Data Literacy

Computers are deeply embedded in our lives today—the laptop at work, the phone in your pocket, the smart watch on your wrist, smart devices in homes and cars. It’s hard to imagine a time when computer literacy was not a requirement for employment and business success, and a big part of social and personal experiences. Nearly all businesses in all industries today require employees be able to use a device to communicate, collaborate, and conduct day-to-day business.

There is another kind of literacy that is fast becoming a de-facto part of doing business: data literacy. Data literacy is the ability to understand, find meaning, interpret, and communicate using data. As with computer literacy, data literacy at both an individual and organizational level is increasingly seen as a fundamental skill necessary for success in today’s data-driven economy.

A fully data-literate individual has a working knowledge of where data comes from, how it is processed, how it is organized, how it is managed, and how it is used. A fully data-literate organization has practical knowledge of how to manage, organize, consolidate, govern, prepare, analyze, and derive value from data.We’ve built a data literacy body of knowledge (DLBOK) that provides a high-level overview of data literacy topics, from basic data concepts to applied knowledge. Everyone who works with data needs to understand all of the topics to be fully data literate.

Dave Wells, eLearningCurve’s director of education, notes in a series of blog posts for the Eckerson Group, that building a data literacy program around the data literacy body of knowledge will ensure that each individual employee has the knowledge and skills needed to fulfill their responsibilities, and that the organization collectively has all of the skills needed to communicate, collaborate, and innovate using data.

However, growing literacy doesn’t happen without assessment and planning—assessment of literacy levels both individually and organizationally, and planning to fill knowledge gaps identified through assessment. Wells continues on to state that developing literacy is not an event, but a journey guided by periodic assessment and continuous planning.

eLearningCurve will be launching a data literacy certification program in the upcoming weeks. eLearningCurve's Data Literacy Certification (DLC) will provide a solid foundation in understanding the many dimensions of data and help to fill in data literacy knowledge gaps. DLC will help you to gain the right level of knowledge across the entire data literacy body of knowledge and then provide a respected credential affirming your data knowledge and skills.