Achieving Data Fluency in the Federal Government
The federal government collects an astonishing amount of data, encompassing everything from tracking how many people visit a National Parks webpage to being responsible for safeguarding confidential personal information such as tax returns. While these types of data may have little in common, both can serve important functions when data analysis is applied. Monitoring website activity can determine how many people may be planning to visit a national park, giving insights into needs such as staffing numbers. The secure processing of tax returns is a critical function of government impacting the entire population, and tracking the effectiveness of this system has huge ramifications for the public.
Data collection is an important function of all government agencies, but not all agencies are harnessing the power of data to its full potential. To be 21st-century leaders, agencies need to strive for data fluency.
Our new E-Book, Achieving Data Fluency in the Federal Government, breaks down the steps you will need to take to work towards achieving a data fluent agency.
Data fluency and analysis can feel intimidating, but it’s important to remember that these are acquired skills for everyone. Even the most analytical mind, at some point, had their first look at data analysis tools such as Microsoft Excel and had to start from the beginning. Many agencies struggle with data because their workforce hasn’t had the opportunities, they need to learn the skills, tools, and thought processes that take data to the next level. You may have heard the term ‘data literacy’ used frequently over recent years – data literacy is the ability to read and understand data, while data fluency goes beyond this to teach you and your staff how to strategically learn from and apply that data to a range of uses. In school, we all were taught to read – literacy – and then later learned how to analyze literature, how to write essays examining complicated topics, and how to present effective arguments to back up that analysis. The path from data literacy to data fluency is precisely the same. By learning how to analyze the data you are collecting, you can harness its power to improve your agency’s work, show the impact you are having, and solve complicated problems backed up by evidence.
Management Concepts offers analytics courses to meet your staff where they are in their data analytics knowledge and give them the skills they need to grow. Courses offered include:
- Introduction to Analytics: Develop the analytical skills needed to evaluate and solve problems to improve the success of your organization.
- Analytics Boot Camp: Our Boot Camp offers a strong foundation in additional data analysis techniques that offer insight into data analysis as a business strategy to help you make decisions in mission-critical organizations.
- Evaluating and Presenting Analysis Results: Learn how to take your evaluation and presentation skills to the next level by capturing, analyzing, and determining relevancy to organizational needs.
- Analytics Capstone: Immerse yourself in a real-world analysis environment to apply your data collection, analysis, modeling, evaluation, and presentation skills.
From your first introduction to data analysis all the way up to an expert level Capstone project, Management Concepts has everything you need to become data fluent. After you’ve finished reading our eBook, contact us to customize a plan tailored to your agency’s analytics needs.
