It’s No Longer Just Enough To Know

In a recent conversation about using more analytics in the measurement and evaluation of public policies and programs, one of my colleagues said that in today’s world, “It’s no longer just enough to know.”

The point being if you aren’t using data and analysis to enhance your efforts and empower decision-makers with actionable insights, then you are not serving the public to the best of your ability.

A lot of government programs, non-profits and philanthropic organizations are what he called, “Information Rich, but Data Poor.”

Check out my upcoming webinar on Feb 15, 2017! https://dmaiph.com/2017/01/14/analytics-and-data-driven-decision-making-webinar-on-feb-15/

Just because you gather massive amounts of information in the form of data points, does not mean the data is adding value. In fact one of the biggest challenges the corporate world has been dealing with the past few years is how to optimize Big Data.

We live in a world where so much data is produced and captured, then analyzed and published in reports and article, yet the data and analysis alone is often not having the impact our policies and projects were intended to have.

In effect, we might know things, but we aren’t able to influence decisions because our data is not compelling enough.

To this end, I have advocated importing some analytics themed best practices from the corporate world to educate more on what to do with the data and how to put the data to use. To in short, be Information Rich, Data Rich to move towards more Data-Driven Decision-Making.

Starting backwards, I will first focus my training on the How. How do we make more data-driven decisions?

The I will focus on the Why. Why do we need to make more data-driven decisions?

From there we will go into several business analytics concepts like Data Visualizations, Public Data Mining, Data Lakes, Demographic Profiling using Big Data, and Data Blending.

A final topic of interest that I will bring to the discussion is the Plus Minus Implications for Unstructured and Qualitative Data. Things that at first can be hard to assign a number too, but are just important as any piece of traditional data used in decision-making.

At the conclusion of my work, public policy and project reporting will be much more data rich, influence will improve and decision-making enhanced.

Now we won’t just know, we will be able to champion what we know in ways that will make a difference.

Analytics Education – Facilitating a mastery of the fundamentals of analytics is what DMAIPH does best. All across the world, companies are scrambling to hire analytics talent to optimize the big data they have in their businesses. We can empower students and their instructors with the knowledge they need to prepare for careers in analytics. Contact DMAIPH now at analytics@dmaiph.com or connect with me directly so we can set a guest lecturer date, On-the-Job Training experience or other analytics education solution specifically tailored to your needs.