Whitepaper

In today’s dynamic environment, data can support operational and analytics activities at numerous different times and in different ways. The word utility is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “the state of being useful, profitable, or beneficial”.

For the purposes of this checklist report, we will define data utility as measure that reflects a combination of data’s usefulness, its contribution to organizational profitability, and its ability to benefit the organization. It is a concept that reflects three facets of data operationalization:

• The consumers and their data management use cases
• The contexts in which the data is used
• The expectations consumers have for data usability within their specific use cases

The notion of trust in the usability of the data is critical for ensuring that business leaders can have confidence their decision making is predicted on reliable and accurate information. However, data trust goes beyond simple data quality metrics, and in this checklist, we consider a holistic approach that blends social and technological methods for assessing data utility and asserting a level of data trust.