Data producers need to know why

It’s all very well saying, as I did yesterday, that data producers need to do more to provide us better quality data the data we need to solve our problems.

But, why would they?

They’re busy! There’s a million things they could be doing. Why invest in their data?

Even if they were forced to do it, they would only do the minimum required to check the task off so they can work on others where they know the value.

That’s where we, as data practitioners, need to be really good at articulating the why.

What’s the business value we’re providing? Why does it align with our organisations goals? How can we explain that in terms they understand?

If we can do that well, we can get projects prioritised to improve the data applicability, by talking to the teams directly and/or by engaging with our organisations usual prioritisation process.

They’ll then be much more incentivised to work with us to meet our shared goals.