{"id":7669,"date":"2025-07-07T07:59:49","date_gmt":"2025-07-07T07:59:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/?p=7669"},"modified":"2025-07-07T07:59:50","modified_gmt":"2025-07-07T07:59:50","slug":"data-is-everywhere-just-not-where-we-need-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/2025\/07\/07\/data-is-everywhere-just-not-where-we-need-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Data is everywhere, just not where we need\u00a0it"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We\u2019ve never had more data. Some think it\u2019s the new oil<\/a>, the new gold<\/a>, the new soil<\/a>, something of a revolution. Is it? Or are we just still humans stumbling around in the dark?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earth observation satellites scan our planet, sensors (there are more sensors on Earth than there are people) track the movements of people and things, energy flows, air quality, water usage, and behaviours. Our global financial systems process billions of transactions a day. Most organisations, public and private, are drowning in dashboards, APIs, spreadsheets, data lakes, clouds, compute, applications, and now \u2018ai\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cEvery age thinks it\u2019s the modern age\u2026but this one really is\u201d
Dreams Rewired<\/a>, Manu Luksch<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

And yet, when we need to make decisions that matter\u200a\u2014\u200ahow to finance a green retrofit, where to send emergency flood support, or how to measure progress toward net zero, the data we need is often hard to access or nowhere to be found. Or it exists, but it\u2019s in the wrong format, in the wrong place, scattered across organisations and systems, under the wrong licence, or wrapped around the wrong market incentives, or just poorly governed and hard to trust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why is this important to our future?<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019re in an era where our financial economy<\/a> is demanding \u2018quality\u2019 data from the real economy<\/a>. Our financial systems have developed over centuries to measure, track, verify, use and report on the rate of change of \u2018one dimension\u2019: money. As we continue the shift to make our environment measurable, we must get the \u2018exchange rate\u2019 right between financial investment and environmental outcomes (climate, nature, air quality, water, biodiversity, and so on).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Right now the \u2018exchange rates\u2019 are all over the place and, importantly, as we step forward we need to measure the rate of change of many parameters, not just one: we need a step-change in how we think about \u2018data\u2019 and data sharing<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It\u2019s hard to understate quite how far away the real economy is from generating financial-grade data<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019re still mostly in the 1970s. Environmental disclosures still rely on highly manual processes, despite widespread digitisation and hundreds of application vendors<\/a> in the market, it\u2019s still mostly clipboards and spreadsheets or, for 99% of the world, nothing at all. This is not a problem of data scarcity, it\u2019s a problem of incentives, structure<\/em>, and alignment<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019ve built systems that are optimised for accumulation, not coordination. We have engineered data pipelines that extract value, but not the wiring to deliver reciprocity (shared benefits).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In the language of infrastructure: we\u2019ve laid the cables, but we\u2019ve neglected the grid<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

We are told to \u201cmake data-driven decisions\u201d while simultaneously being denied the means to do so at scale. Meanwhile, we waste more time (and money, opportunity and emissions) trying to reconcile, reformat, clean, or even find<\/em> the data than the actual decisions that we are trying to make.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The result is a kind of systemic gaslighting: we pretend that the data is \u2018there\u2019 when what we really mean is that it exists \u2026 <\/em>but existing<\/em> is not the same as usable<\/em>, and very far away from trusted<\/em>. Just because something is stored on a server doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s infrastructure. Just because it\u2019s digital doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s useful. Just because it\u2019s available doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s accessible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

McKinsey (The data-driven enterprise of 2025<\/em><\/a>) <\/em>suggests that data professionals still spend up to 80% of their time preparing data rather than using it. This is the same number I have from over 25 years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So where do we go from here?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\n

Data is everywhere but until it flows to where it\u2019s needed<\/strong> (when it\u2019s needed, and with the right context) we\u2019re not building a digital future we\u2019re just building more digital noise<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

We need to stop pretending that technology (including ai) alone will solve this. We must stop framing data as a \u2018commodity\u2019 to be owned and sweated, and start treating it as infrastructure to be governed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We must design for connection not monopoly control, for shared purpose not private hoarding. We must invest in the \u2018boring\u2019 bits: governance, legal standards, licensing, permission\/consent, metadata, interoperability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the stuff that doesn\u2019t make the headlines, but makes everything else work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We\u2019ve never had more data. Some think it\u2019s the new oil, the new gold, the new soil, something of a revolution. Is it? Or are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7670,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,29],"tags":[51,54],"class_list":["post-7669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-data","tag-data","tag-data-infrastructure"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/blog-diejnwwni.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pfJFK3-1ZH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7669"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7669\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7671,"href":"https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7669\/revisions\/7671"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}