Last month, President Joe Biden issued an executive order to create a data-driven approach to management—amid the pandemic and future public health threats. The response model was designed to help transform the effectiveness and improve measurable, informed, and evidence-based government decisions.

 These goals may sound quite familiar to an organization, and by a better understanding of the model issued by the President, here’s how you can translate them into a guide for business leaders to implement in organizations concerned about data-management approaches:

1. Data-driven change requires leadership from the top

There’s no doubt that most companies have data transformation as one of the organizational strategic goals. As a company leader, he/she ought to sponsor transformation in the same way an executive order does. Data transformation is vital–and so is leadership at the top-level.

2. Better decisions are made when informed by data

Regardless of whether you are in a period of emergency or business-as-usual, the best available data always expands business strength. 80% of pioneers say data has given them a critical edge during the pandemic. Data is fairly perfect, and it mustn’t impede progress.

Often, the technology used to access information is either too expensive, poorly connected, or hard to retrieve. A majority of users agree that an inability to access data or connect with systems can negatively impact customer experience. But the executive order recognizes change as an ongoing process in problem-solving using data.

3. Allocate Responsibility for utilization of data across the organization

The executive order mandates a leader and a data leadership committee responsible for change. Your organization’s Covid-19 Response Coordinator would be a Chief Data Officer. The leadership panel will set key metrics for the organization and work with the right people to create and align data and locate sources to support the metrics.

4. Empower anybody in your organization to discover insights with data

Data is like water—it’s something that needs to be accessible by all and needs to be cleaned and maintained for regular consumption. While private sectors and organizations don’t have to make their information open to the public, it is imperative to make information accessible to all individuals in the organization. Key Performance Indicators may help leaders, but the rest in the organization need access to disaggregated data to manage regular business operations. 

5. Promote and Encourage Data-driven innovations

As a pioneer, does your data policy empower innovation? Individuals at all levels ought to have the confidence and the idea to follow a data discovery cycle. With as little intermediation as possible, they can utilize data insights to drive business choices.