Turn off the dirty tap of data

Turning off the dirty tap of data with Mick Capern, Westward Housing

Mick Capern from Westward Housing Group provided an excellent presentation and masterclass for the Disruptive Innovators Network on how to transform the way you make use of data and achieve data maturity.

We have summarised a few of the key takeaways:

• Unless you’ve done a comprehensive data audit you have no idea of the quality or provenance of the data you are making decisions on. Undertake a data maturity exercise to give yourself a benchmark to work from.
• Turn off all the dirty data going into the business until you know its source and veracity. This will help ensure understanding is crystal clear.
• Not all data is equal – Rank data in order of criticality (e.g. health and safety related). We use a ‘RAG’ (red amber green) rating. Focus on the most important information first.
• Collect data only if you’re going to use it. There is an inflationary cost to all that data you store.
• Have a ‘don’t walk past’ approach. If staff see that data is wrong, fix/report it. Don’t leave it because it isn’t your job.
• Consider having a ‘Data Council’ to assess and advise on the quality of data being used to make decisions.
• Digital literacy at an Exec level is not where it needs to be. Data is not a ICT responsibility. Consider how you develop the skills of the Exec team to the same level as for example Risk Management, but around data?
• Use of platforms such as Power BI to help identify and accelerate data cleansing.
• Finally, don’t even start thinking about deploying automation and AI in your business unless you have clean data. It will severely compromise what you can achieve.

A link to watch the presentation, ‘Turning off the dirty tap of data’, is below.

Watch Here!