Last week, we welcomed Dr Jenny Andrew from the Prospect trade union and Jon Daley from housing regeneration company G2M to the LCR Data Community of Practice to discuss misunderstanding and misrepresentation in data.
Jenny is from a family of trade unionists and was the first-ever Head of Data employed by a trade union in the UK. She highlighted that data is necessarily a simplification of the real world, so like car wing mirrors, can only ever give us a partial view. She believes we need more people asking tougher questions about how we and others deal in data.
“We simplify this stuff partly to clarify it,” she said. “We simplify it to bring problems down to a tractable scale. But chances are, you are probably leaving out aspects of reality that might muddy the waters or weaken the case you’re trying to make. In doing any of this, you shape it to an agenda, consciously or unconsciously, and that is both an ethical and a scientific trip hazard.” What may be lost, she added “might be beauty, it might be truth”.
Jon Daley is Head of Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) at G2M, and he came armed with five examples of things that he believes are misrepresented in his area of work and must be better interrogated. They are: energy performance, net-zero housing, carbon offsetting, retrofitting and social value. He called for more transparent methodologies and better disclosures if we really want “homes that are safe, in resilient communities, and of course, a more sustainable nation”.
You can see the full discussion below and get videos from all of our events on the Open Data Manchester Vimeo channel. For our next events in the Liverpool City Region, and beyond, visit our events page. If you’d like to talk at a future LCR DCP event, email kirsty@lcrdcp.org, no topic too big or small.
Huge thanks as ever to our speakers, attendees and the University of Liverpool’s Civic Health Innovation Labs (CHIL) for their support.