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Data Equity

This is new terminology for me and I have been in the data business for a long time. The logic does not make sense to me as relates to data

"If equity isn’t intentional from the beginning, we’re not going to end up with equitable outcomes. It won’t happen by accident,” 

Data collected from any source is meant to represent the system as it is. If it turns out the system is not equitable then the data will reflect that reality and correctly so. Data cannot by definition be equitable or be made equitable unless we live in a perfect, Utopian world. The question about how to use data as it stands to identify inequity is not a novel one - many have tried to answer that question. Creating a misguided phrase like data equity will only serve to confuse and confound. 

There is no one size fits all to that question of how to use data to drive equity in the world. This rather juvenile take on visualizing data inequity is unlikely to produce good, usable solutions. In the meanwhile we have new, buzzy phrase in this business that added zero value to the discourse but will likely make its way to some analyst report and folks like me will have to have a point of view on it. 

Reminds me of the time when me and my former colleague C were meeting with a customer who asked us what they should do about having a data fabric in their enterprise stack. C said that was object relational mapping a while back, rebranded and will go the way of a data lake that turns into a data swamp. You could hear the pin drop in that room. C was never one for political correctness and we him respected him for it. Sometimes the hard truths need to be told unvarnished.

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