Have you heard this quote before? I believe what the quote is getting at is reasonable people, when making their minds up about something they are not knowledgable about, seek out that knowledge (or wisdom) before deciding where they land. People, in general, like to see some sort of proof or evidence before they support new technology, a new process or an opinion on something. And sometimes, I our world of instantaneous gratification, people mistake data for wisdom. Data can become wisdom, but there are steps along the way. And, this takes time and intention.
If you have never heard of the DIKW Pyramid before I would like to share what I have learned and apply it in the context of local government. It is a step by step process to take raw data (just numbers) and turn it into high value wisdom to make great decisions. The steps are Data, Information, Knowledge and Wisdom.
Although some may argue, I believe local government has become quite good at acquiring data. An example of this might be knowing how many of our citizens use a facility in a year or how much solid waste we send to a landfill in a year. This is not exactly the rawest form of data (literally just numbers with no context) but for our purposes this is still very basic data.
The next step in our pursuit of wisdom is to turn this data into Information. To do so we must make an effort to refine this data. In our examples instead of merely knowing the numbers of visitors to a recreation facility we enrich that data by finding out the age of the user, the time of day when they visit, what type of activity they choose and their frequency of visiting. For the solid waste we would benefit from knowing what type of waste is being sent to the landfill, when our volumes are the highest or where in the community are the highest users of this service.
I fully expect most local governments can see themselves getting to this point. There is certainly great technology out there that can give you this information. It comes at a cost but in my opinion when pursuing great decisions it is worth it.
I also fully expect that many will stop here. Information is certainly more valuable than raw data. And experienced staff can certainly, in most cases, apply some of their own thinking to reach a decision, most especially in their own area of operations.
However, I would argue that the last two steps in the pyramid are the most valuable. Moving from information to knowledge requires one to now add a layer of overall achievement in our goals to the mix. For example, knowing what we know in the areas described above, we can now ask questions of these services like - How does recreation user data help us support our Recreation or Active Community goal in our Strategic Plan? or How does our waste diversion data help us to support our overall Environmental goal in our Strategic Plan?
This linkage back to our Strategic Plan is a very key step that really illustrates alignment back to the priorities given to us by our Councils and the community. It demonstrates that every area of the organization has performed a relevancy and value check on the programs they provide.
The final step In the pyramid is nurturing wisdom out of our knowledge. Making a wise decision. And having the ability to use the three previous steps to tell a compelling story as to why we have made this decision. A hugely important step to build trust with our community. In our examples of recreation facilities and waste diversion we ask What is the best decision? And why? Here is what it may look like.
We may have found out that the median age of user in our recreation facility is higher than industry averages, that demand for pickle-ball courts is higher than any other activity while at the same time demand for racquetball is diminishing and our peak time for overall use is between 8 am and 10 am. Thinking about our Active Community goal "Every citizen who wants to be active has that opportunity." the recreation department may use the knowledge acquired to recommend our recreation offerings in our facility are adjusted to accommodate more pickle-ball opportunities earlier in the day and do that by taking time away from racquetball offerings. If the trend continues it may even lead to retrofitting the facility to accommodate pickle-ball at the expense of racquetball.
In the example of our waste services we may have found that our construction waste numbers are quite a bit higher than industry averages and their peak comes earlier in the year than we originally anticipated. As well, when we did an audit of our construction waste upwards of 65% of it could be diverted from the landfill and either re-used or recycled. When looking at our ambitious environmental goal of being "Leaders in environmental stewardship in the country" it is very possible to see a recommendation of piloting a program in early spring through late fall to capture construction materials that could be re-used and recycled prior to them being brought to the landfill.
You can probably see this process used in your area of operations. In fact, I would not be surprised if you may be doing it already but did not recognize you were. Like anything else, intention and practice will allow for next level proficiency. And in a world full of data I see immense opportunity to leverage that data to make some great and logical decisions.
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