Why are Data Literacy Programs part of a CIO’s agenda?

Is it enough for the CIO to provide the data to users?

In a lot of the cases, CIOs are tasked with providing the data to users, so that they can make better data-driven decisions to achieve a competitive advantage or optimize operations. But if users are not data literate, just having access to the data is not going to solve any business problems. Data Literacy should be a shared responsibility and must be in Chief Information Officer’s agenda. If CIOs fail to do make users data literate, things may not look great for the CIO because the business cannot make data-driven decisions and everyone will go back to the CIO and her team to understand the problem. We may call this a data analytics myopic view when the IT organization does not keep the end goal in mind which is users being able to make better business decisions. Users need to understand the sources of the data, the validation process, and the definitions of metrics.

The more data literate the users, the better they can make decisions using data.