The Brexit Bus encapsulates businesses' feelings on data

We call it 'The Boris Johnson effect'

The Brexit campaign was full of symbols, the most familiar of which was the Vote Leave bus, which came to represent both the desire to take back control and the (alleged) untruths being peddled in the referendum. How many people made their decision two years ago based on symbols and emotions, and how many relied on hard evidence? How many could actually say that they made a data-driven decision?

The Brexit Bus demonstrates the importance of the quality, accessibility and timeliness of data. A frequent complaint of voters, from the very beginning of the referendum campaign, was about the lack of reliable data to back up or deny claims - many voters, who felt that they couldn't trust the data that they were being shown, were still misinformed by the 23rd of June 2016.

Businesses face similar challenges. Important decisions are taken based on the data available, but can they trust it?

Computing questioned 170 IT decision makers across the UK, from businesses ranging from smaller than 250 employees to those with several thousand. The results are now available in our white paper: ‘Data Driven Decision Making - The Boris Johnson Effect'.

More than three quarters of respondents told us that data-driven decision making was extremely or very important to their business, with the remainder classifying it as ‘moderately' important. It is a good thing, then, that more than said that the general availability of data was very good or good, and a third said that it was acceptable.

Many respondents - 62 per cent - told us that they trusted the data that their organisation uses for decision making, which is a marked change from several years ago. That shifts when it comes to publicly-available data, however, where corporate trust is at a low ebb. However, eliminating this kind of data from analysis will mean that many decisions involving external factors will be less data-driven than is ideal.

To access the white paper and read our full analysis of the responses, download it now.