Data Curation: Essential for Enhancing Your Data Assets

Having large volumes of data isn’t enough: it’s what you make of it that counts. To make the most out of your data, you need to distill a real data culture within your company. The foundation of this culture is data curation.

0% of the world’s data has been created in the last two years. With the exponential growth of connected devices, companies will be confronted with the unfortunate reality that our ability to create data will far surpass our ability to manage and exploit it. 

And it’s not going to get any better! According to estimates published in Statista’s Digital Economy Compass 2020, the annual volume of digital data created globally has increased more than 20-fold over the past decade and will surpass the 50 zettabyte mark by 2021.

In this context, it is not surprising that most companies are currently only able to analyze 12% of the data they have at their disposal. Because, behind the collection, storage, and security of data, there is, above all, the business value that can be derived from it.

This is the challenge addressed by the concept of Data Curation: the essential step to exploit the potential of an organization’s abundant data assets. 

The Definition of Data Curation

According to the definition given by the INIST (Institut de l’Information Scientifique et Technique), which is attached to the CNRS, 

“Curation refers to all the activities and operations necessary for the active management of digital research data, throughout their life cycle. The objective is to make them accessible, shareable, and reusable in a sustainable way. Three stakeholders can be identified in the data life cycle: the creators, most often researchers, the “curators” and the users.”

In other words, data curation is a task that consists of identifying in a data catalog those that can be valorized and exploited and, for a second time, put them at the disposal of users likely to draw the best lessons from them.

To set up an efficient and relevant Data Curation, you need to start with a precise mapping of the available data. This initial mapping is the basis for pragmatic and operational data governance.

Once the rules of governance have been established, it is towards the data user that all attention must be focused. Data is a mineral that is only worthwhile if it is properly valued. This valuation must be thought of as a response to the user’s needs. It is the latter who is at the origin of the data curation project. 

An iterative and continuous process for data exploitation, distinct from all the tasks essential to data governance (from quality management to data protection and even data life cycle management).

Data Curation: Essential Prerequisites, Undeniable Benefits

Data Curation is a perspective of rapid and massive development of a data culture within an organization.

The creation of a data management and curation strategy allows you to take stock of the data produced. It is then possible to select the most relevant data and enrich it with the metadata necessary to understand and reuse it, including by business users.

Everyone in the company can then base their choices, decisions, strategies and methods on the systematic use of data, without having to have specific skills.

The objective: Creating the conditions for systematic use of data as a basis for any project or approach, and not to limit its use to Data Science or data expert teams.

To effectively deploy your data curation strategy, you must therefore rely on elements that are essential to the proper management of your data assets. The heart of the reactor is not limited to data catalogs. 

If they are essential and directly result from your data map, metadata governance plays an even more crucial role. Metadata makes it easier for users to interact with data portfolios in natural language. 

With data curation, get into a data-driven dynamic for good.

About Actian Corporation

Actian makes data easy. Our data platform simplifies how people connect, manage, and analyze data across cloud, hybrid, and on-premises environments. With decades of experience in data management and analytics, Actian delivers high-performance solutions that empower businesses to make data-driven decisions. Actian is recognized by leading analysts and has received industry awards for performance and innovation. Our teams share proven use cases at conferences (e.g., Strata Data) and contribute to open-source projects. On the Actian blog, we cover topics ranging from real-time data ingestion, data analytics, data governance, data management, data quality, data intelligence to AI-driven analytics.