What is Data Literacy? Why is it Important?

Data is one of the factors that has significantly changed daily life and work processes in recent years. Communicating with others in a completely different way through Teams, Zoom and other visual meeting applications, for example, is part of the use of the internet and therefore of data. In addition, all these digital resources offer unprecedented opportunities to organize life and work. For example, you can be automatically reminded to call someone, receive almost all mail as an email, your smartphone can seamlessly take you to where you are going, and you can notify everyone through social media that you have experienced.

All this use of digital resources involves data. It is quite necessary to be aware of the importance of data and, most importantly, to allow data to facilitate your work. Thanks to data, for example, it is possible to search, recognize an application, work, analyze, communicate and use data in more areas. That is why it is extremely important that the data is handled and evaluated by the right people. Let's take a look at who this data that affects business processes and your life can be processed by and all the details you need to know about data literacy.

What Does Data Literacy Mean?

Data literacy is the ability to read, evaluate, discuss and work with data/information. It can also be defined as a skill that enables everyone to ask the right questions, gather information, evaluate, and communicate effectively with others. The data literate employee can “read” the data, understand it, and use it to learn more about the world and the organization around them.

Data literacy enables one to gain knowledge and clarity about events through the right questions and, most importantly, to use that information at the right time and place. In other words, data literacy allows you to effectively interpret large amounts of data, so you can make decisions faster. Using analytics to systematically analyze data and innovate is extremely valuable to organizations regardless of their industry.

Data literacy, as mentioned, basically consists of four parts. To read data, to be able to work with data, to be able to analyze data and communicate about data.

• Being able to read data: You can understand what is presented or found to you during the data search.
• Ability to work with data: You can process data. You can apply it in your work by referring to data from a business meeting, or you can work with a program such as Microsoft Excel.
• To be able to analyze data: You compare data, put it in context, investigate, and ask questions about the creation of data.
• Communicating about data: It becomes possible to explain your own interpretation of the data and test it against the comments of others. You can discuss how you arrived at your interpretation, which is evidenced by the data. You can ask other critical questions about the data.

Skills and Competencies Data Literacy Needs to Have

Data literacy is made up of three basic skills that your organization's employees should have. These core skills provide the ability to find, understand, analyze, and interpret information from different data sources.

• Language Skills: The term “language proficiency” refers to a range of skills, from understanding written words and sentences to interpreting and evaluating complex texts.
• Mathematical Skills: Arithmetic refers to the ability to apply, understand and communicate numerical ideas and information. It is the ability to solve a (numerical) problem in a realistic context that can be presented in many forms.
• Data Competence: It means being able to formulate the need for information well, show where the information can be obtained and understand its content. It also provides a common data language.

Data literacy consists of skills as well as a set of competencies that must be possessed to effectively read, understand and work with data/information.

• To be able to formulate information needs: It involves the formulation, localization and retrieval of digital data, information and content. You can determine the relevance of the resource and evaluate the content (data).
• Communication and collaboration: Aware of cultural and age differences, you can interact and collaborate through digital technologies. This competence is also important for managing your digital identity and reputation.
• Creating digital content: You can create and edit digital content to enhance knowledge and context and integrate it into existing information while understanding how to apply copyright and licensing. It is also important that you know how to use computer systems and applications.
• Digital security expert: In digital environments, you need to be able to protect devices, content, personal data, and privacy.
• Problem solving skills: Identifying needs and problems in digital environments and solving conceptual problems/problematic situations is one of the competencies. You can also gain the ability to use digital tools to innovate processes and products to keep pace with digital evolution.

The Importance of Data Literacy

It is based on many decisions made within an organization about financial, marketing and even personnel. It is necessary to rely on information to support decisions. If the data is not accurate, has different definitions or does not provide us with the insight we need, it causes bad decisions to be made that can harm the institution. That's why you can't run an organization relying solely on your instincts, you need to base all information on facts and data. Data literacy plays a huge role in the management of organizations, in business processes and in the error-free operation of many departments. It allows you to extract and interpret information from different sources to help build future-oriented and explainable decision-making processes within an organization. In addition, data literacy not only supports the development of personal skills, but also promotes a data-driven culture within companies.

The Importance of Data Quality in Data Literacy

When it comes to data, the most important thing is the concept of data quality. Data quality is one of the important elements of data management. It is crucial for an organization to determine what the data quality and standard should be in order for an organization to be data-driven and take full advantage of the data.

Determining the appropriateness of data is an important aspect of data literacy. Determining whether this data can be used for proper management is closely related to data quality.

Understanding how, when, and why data is made available is the starting point for testing data. But when all this is met, it is possible to truly embrace data-driven work.

Can Everyone Be Data Literate?

Certain employees or departments in organizations have knowledge about data literacy. Often, the rest of the organization is inexperienced in data literacy. As a result, many problems arise when data is not understood, products such as dashboards are not used, or incorrect data are used.

To succeed in data-driven studies, it is essential that employees are data literate. Data literacy is the ability to find, understand, analyze, and interpret information from different sources. This definition may seem simple, but there are a number of factors that go into becoming data literate. After receiving the necessary training, these skills can be acquired. It is especially important that organizations provide incentives for such training for their employees. Because improving data literacy is more than just a few employees taking a course or running a project. It is a continuous process in the organization that must be worked on. With the help of data officers or a data coach, everyone in the organization can learn about data literacy and initiate a data-driven digital transformation. For other services such as data quality and data storage, which play a big role in data literacy, you can take advantage of the Komtaş ecosystem and prepare your organization for the future with safe steps.