Global industry leaders have launched The Data Literacy Project to meet the growing demand for a data-literate workforce. The community is dedicated to making society fluent in data and places data literacy at the heart of individual and organisational success.
As an essential skill in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, data literacy empowers everyone to ask questions of data and machines, build knowledge, make decisions and communicate its meaning with others. Yet, experts estimate that fewer than one-third of us can confidently understand, analyse and argue with data.
The Data Literacy Project was conceived by data analytics leader Qlik, who launched the initiative with five founding partners: Cognizant, Experian, the Chartered Institute of Marketing, Pluralsight and Data to the People. These organisations will drive the agenda, deliver educational resources and training and ensure the project achieves its mission.
“With the growing presence of automation, robotics and Artificial Intelligence, feeling comfortable and confident working with data is critical for individuals navigating the future of work,” said Mike Capone, Qlik CEO. “We have brought together this group of passionate leaders to ignite discussion, create better resources and drive greater appreciation for data skills that are critical for the data revolution occurring around us.”
“There is also an important role for organisations to play in building a data literate world,” said Capone. “Our new Data Literacy Index shows large companies have the potential to achieve US$500 million in higher enterprise value through a more data literate culture and workforce, and yet only a third of enterprises provide employees with data literacy training, showing a significant adoption and enablement gap.”
The Data Literacy Project is committed to:
- Inspiring major organisations globally to make data literacy an imperative
- Creating the most accessible and comprehensive global data literacy educational resource ecosystem
- Empowering educational institutions globally to place data literacy into the mainstream curriculum
The project will be working over the next six months to build a roadmap to deliver against these declarations and invites private and public sector organisations, governments and education institutions to join the mission.
The new Data Literacy Project platform will act as the community hub, providing assessment tools, information and learning resources for both individuals and organisations to help them improve their data literate skills, culture and even society.
The educational resources will be regularly updated to provide continued, tailored learning programmes for individuals. Organisations will also be invited to use the upcoming assessment tool to help them identify their data literacy maturity and see how enhanced data literacy can improve their corporate performance.
In addition, a Data Literacy Project advisory board has been formed to provide strategic guidance on how the Data Literacy Project can best achieve its goals, as well as give direction on how to shape educational content and assessment tools. All advisory board members will be announced in due course.
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