The Last Mile Problem - Data Fluency: Empowering Your Organization with Effective Data Communication - page 4

3. Organizational constraints inhibit the effective use of data.
In school districts around the country, superintendents often lament the lack
of good data. Indeed, the Gates Foundation is currently putting significant
resources into developing district level dashboards to inform decisions.
Yet, critical organizational challenges remain with respect to collecting
the data in a timely manner, linking data to competency and performance
assessments, and engaging teachers in the process.
We believe that data-phobia, technology limitations, or organizational dysfunc-
tion are symptoms of something broader—not the root causes of the lack of
payoff we are currently realizing from data. The root cause is something we
call “the last mile” problem. Fundamentally, failing to use data isn't a techno-
logical problem, but a social problem.
The last mile analogy comes from telecommunications where bridging the final
few feet from the big pipes carrying gigabytes of Internet traffic throughout
your city to each individual house is the most costly. With data, collecting and
storing information is the easy part. The technologists have done their job. It is
analytics, application, and adoption that pose the greatest challenge. Although
data storage can be done en masse , the last mile is personal and often orga-
nization-specific. Revealing insights, influencing decisions, and taking action
requires skill and motivation at a personal and organizational level. This is the
missing link—the last mile—requiring individual and organizational data fluency.
This topic is about how organizations can more efectively communicate with
data—both internally and with external constituents. It is about people and
the specific skills needed to be capable consumers and effective producers
of data-based reports and presentations.
DATA FLUENCy: UNLOCk THE
POTENTIAL ENERGy OF DATA IN yOUR
ORGANIZATION
In many ways, data is like oil—and it is certainly so in the economic engine
of your organization. Just like you can't pull crude oil from the ground and
pump it directly into your gas tank, or mold it into a plastic LEGO® brick, you
can't dump data into an organization and expect it to be useful. Creating