When digital literacy fails, IT gets the blame

In 2022, McKinsey published a report called, “The data-driven enterprise of 2025.” The report highlighted seven key characteristics of successfully data-driven companies, each of which lands firmly on the desks of CIOs, who are expected to provide leadership for the data-driven enterprise.

These include:

• Data embedded in every decision and process
• Data processed and delivered in real-time
• Usable and integrated data
• Dedicated data product teams
• Expansion of the chief data officer (CDO) role
• Data-sharing ecosystems
• Sound data management practices

Now that we’re entering 2025, we can assess progress against that three-year outlook. Unfortunately, as most CIOs know today, each is still a work in progress.

Nevertheless, progress is being made and data-driven digitalization projects are being implemented. The question is: Are companies ready for them?

The data and digital literacy gap

“Despite the growing importance of data literacy, many organizations still face challenges in this area,” notes Celerdata, an analytics database provider, in describing what it calls a “data literacy gap” that “exists between the data skills employees need and the skills they actually possess.”

And as any IT chief knows, such gaps create challenges for translating data — and digital solutions — into business value.

In some cases, new technologies and business processes are coming at employees faster than they can absorb them. In other cases, organizations skimp on training and consider a digitalization project complete at the point it is placed into production. There is no formal follow-up to gauge whether employees are using new systems and data correctly.

I talk with CIOs about this, and more than a few shrug their shoulders and tell me that the employee data literacy gap is not something that they’re really in charge of. They say that it’s IT’s job to put together data and systems. Vendors, user departments, consultants, HR, and in some cases an internal training department are responsible for the rest. I tell my colleagues that if I were still CIO’ing today, I wouldn’t agree. In fact, I’d put elements like “poor employee data literacy” on my personal risk management list.

Why? Because when new technology and business processes fail to produce at the levels they are expected to produce, it is usually IT that gets the blame.

IT in the crosshairs

Real life provides a plethora of examples of this in action:

• The company that creates a job hiring engine that uses a faulty algorithm developed by employees, and that is purposely limited to an evaluation of past hiring preferences instead of objectively assessing the talent that is available in the open market
• The healthcare clinic referrals that used to be handled by front desk personnel in doctors’ offices, but are now handled by a separate central referral routing group, only no one understands the new business process, or who should doing what when
• Frontline customer service agents who get so frustrated when they can’t escalate a call to a supervisor that they simply disconnect the call

Each of these is an example of a newly digitalized system that was intended to streamline processes and data, give employees better data, and make life easier — but they didn’t. And if you were a customer in any of these transactions, you very likely heard the words, “I’d like help you, but I’m having trouble with the system.”

Even if systems are near perfect, it’s convenient for people to blame systems because a system is an abstract entity, making it much easier to blame than the person (or department) who failed to train or prepare users to use them.

For this same reason, the ultimate blame for a digital failure can come back to haunt IT and the CIO, because it’s the system — and not learning how to use it — that is at fault, and the system is IT’s responsibility.

What then should be the path for CIOs to help ensure digital and data literacy? Here are three pieces of advice.

Focus on the soft skills side of each digital project

It’s easy to assemble project plans and timelines for digital technology implementations, but not as straightforward to equip users with the proper education and skills needed for these new systems. Skills development milestones should be itemized for every digital project. If they’re not, the CIO should make a case for them.

The case to be made is that a system can deliver what the company expects only if there are employees skilled to run it. Employees can’t be “learning on the job,” muddling away after a system goes live. Instead, employees should be trained and skills-tested for a new system before the system goes live — like pilots are trained and tested before they can fly.

Be a soft skills leader

By insisting that requisite digital skills and system education are mastered before a system cutover occurs, the CIO assumes a leadership role in the educational portion of each digital project, even though IT itself may not be doing the training.

Where IT should be inserting itself is in the area of system skills training and testing before the system goes live. The dual goals of a successful digital project should be two-fold: a system that’s complete and ready to use; and a workforce that’s skilled and ready to use it.

Elevate the training and hands-on roles of IT staff

IT business analysts, help desk personnel, IT trainers, and technical support personnel all have people-helping and support skills that can contribute to digital education efforts throughout the company. The more support that users have, the more confidence they will gain in new digital systems and business processes — and the more successful the company’s digital initiatives will be.

Telehealth is a great example.

When telehealth first started, doctors were concerned about losing firsthand touch with patients, patients were skeptical about meeting with doctors over the internet, and IT and ISPs were experiencing growing pains because the quality of video transmissions was inconsistent.

Eventually, most of the technical glitches were resolved, and doctors, patients, and support medical personnel learned how to integrate virtual visits with regular physical visits and with the medical record system. By the time the pandemic hit in 2019, telehealth visits were already well under way. These visits worked because the IT was there, the pandemic created an emergency scenario, and, most importantly, doctors, patients, and medical support personnel were already trained on using these systems to best advantage.

The human elements — training and skills development — are the critical and essential components of digital projects. That’s precisely why CIOs should insist that education and skills development be requisite milestones that must be met in every digital project.