The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Data Democratisation - Lessons from an Data-Rich Pandemic

The ongoing pandemic has featured unprecedented openness with data, by countries and regions all over the world. Detailed and rich data is available to anyone who wishes to access it, allowing them to attempt to understand the pandemic and to analyse, comment and debate the policy response with data as a foundation.

‘Democratisation’ of data within organisations is also a growing trend. Similarly to what we have seen during the pandemic, this refers to the increasing openness and availability of data (in this case within an organisation), and the ability of employees to use that data in their daily working lives. Other government departments have similarly been releasing more data on a regular basis.

The wide availability of data during Covid-19 is often praised (including by the authors), yet it has not always led to positive outcomes. Whilst many good things have been enabled by the openness of data, there have been notable missteps, some highly public.

In this paper, we examine some of the effects that readily available data had on the pandemic response and the public’s general reaction and understanding to it. We include well known examples and our own personal experiences. Our aim is to illustrate examples of the good, the bad and the ugly of ‘democratisation’ of data, using the pandemic as a motivating example, to give guidance to organisations on maximising the ‘good’, and minimising the ‘ugly’ in their democratisation efforts.

Find the Q&A here: Q&A on 'Challenges in a Digital Era'