Any person who relies on data to take any decision or a person who understands the origination of data or how business uses the data to enrich value to customers or a person who prepares the data so that end users consume the data can be called as Data Citizens. The more the information you have about your business, data / events, the better you look in the world of business. You sound better, you talk value and you become a no-nonsense person at work. Even with all the latest technologies available at our disposal, most of our enterprises still lag to get the entire view of their business in all perspectives.
Recent trend shows that how mono-crop spoils the quality of soil and yields less nutritional value which also cost more compared to multi-crop agriculture. If we consider our DATA as SOIL what are we doing in the current environment to make sure multiple business lines get access to inherit more value out of our DATA. We are just focusing on building multiple silos which is living in its own world. Data Citizen in an enterprise should know how to bring more value to the data we have in the enterprise. Data Citizen should help the business to enhance the business or optimize the business by co relating events / data in the business.
To become a Data Citizen, start with why this data exists? where did it come from? which interface generates this data? Is it automated or manually entered etc. Once we understand the lifecycle of DATA right from creation to reference to reporting to analytics then you will get 360 degree of DATA / BUSINESS. Once we do analysis then you will identify if the operation is effective based on business needs.
End of the Day, as a Data Citizen in an enterprise, you should be able to tell a story to folks who are related to enterprise. Once you understand the data well, then you can visualize the data in different perspective and pick the one which make sense for your business problem.
As citizen obeys the law of land, enterprise citizen follows the Data Governance prinicples to store, nurture and add value to the eco systems. Data citizen will make sure the data security and data distribution mechanism is on par with industry and regulation requirements. As we live in an Information Era, every big organization should create a group of Data Citizens with in the company and see how we can add value to both internal organizational need and external business needs (customer / service providers) using DATA.
