What if data management is not about how much data you have about someone. That is power over someone. What if data management is about how you use the data you have been given to make someone’s life better? Not how you turn them into a customer. And not how you use the data to write a good report, pass an audit, or complie with some regulation.

What if data management is about using data (and digital tools) to make people’s lives better? And the judge of it is them, not us. And the long term, not the short term.

Perhaps it’s time for us, as humanitiarian organisation to stop looking to Gartner and the private sector about how to manage data. Perhaps it’s time to look to our core values and principles. If we do not aspire to become data companies perhaps we should start behaving differently.

It’s time for the change.

Photo by Alexander Sinn