SIGNAL Executive Video: Data Access Is a Key Tool for Modern Organizations

Modern organizations run on data, but they need a workforce skilled at interpreting and managing that information for the greatest advantage, says James Stanger, the chief technology evangelist at the Computing Technology Industry Association, or CompTIA.

Data is important to organizations because it helps them make the right decisions, Stanger told SIGNAL Magazine Executive Editor George Seffers during a SIGNAL Media Executive Video Series discussion. Stanger believes that one of the reasons data has become a hot topic in government and business circles is that it has only been in the last decade or so that organizations of every size and type can easily get access to data and manipulate it.

Some organizations have used data for decades, such as Nielsen Media Research’s TV ratings or Google. But these were large and specialized entities. This capability is now in the grasp of a variety of government agencies and small and medium businesses.

One of the reasons a range of organizations can access this data is that it is being generated by many different sources. From a non-IT perspective, Stanger notes that data can be collected from “data exhaust”—information coming from various sources such as web traffic, email or data pulled from Internet-connected devices such as thermostats and appliances.

“Increasingly we live in an ambient computing world, which is a funny way of saying all of the IoT [Internet of Things] devices we have from webcams to smartwatches, to all the wearables we have: they generate a tremendous amount of data,” Stanger explains.

Organizations can mine this sea of data to create highly detailed representations of individuals and groups. Where this was once the province of a few big, specialized organizations, this information crunching capability is now available to entities across the economy, from federal and state agencies to hard disk manufacturers and cable companies.

Stanger thinks that the commonly used phrase “data is the new oil” somewhat misses the mark. “We ought to think in terms of refining data into information. Information is key here,” he said.

More importantly, what organizations really need are workers who can properly refine that data into actionable information. Public and private organizations are creating new posts, such as chief information officers, to help manage all this new data. More importantly, they are retraining and training new and current personnel “to become fluent in data.”

Stanger believes it’s important for people to really understand what it means to collect, manipulate, visualize and govern data. “The main thing is that we need to create people who are data literate,” he said.

Large organizations have used business intelligence analysts for decades, but with increased access to data, small and medium businesses and organizations “can now have those kinds of specialists.