VIDEO | State of North Dakota, CDO: Data Literacy Resides at the Heart of Data Transformation

(US and Canada) Ravi Krishnan, Chief Data Officer, State of North Dakota, speaks with Adita Karkera, Chief Data Officer, Government and Public Services, Deloitte – USA, about the transformative changes in the service model, providing citizen services powered by AI-ML, and data literacy’s role in data transformation.

Krishnan says remote work is one of the significant changes from the pandemic, and it’s here to stay. He adds that digital transformation happened at scale through the pandemic in the private sector. Citizens now expect the same experience from the public sector. Hence, they are incorporating the private sector’s best practices to become a truly digital enterprise.

Next, he says that with the emergence of the cloud, AI-driven services are available at their fingertips. However, Krishnan states that certain guardrails must be put in place so that the data sets do not have biases.

Speaking about use cases, he emphasizes predicting student learning outcomes and diseases from the citizen's perspective. The former uses data to predict how well the students fare and the possibility of dropping out. He explains that the latter uses models to predict diseases that may prevail based on CDC data, data from health agencies, and trend observation.

Krishnan, discussing automation, maintains that it reduces human dependency on routine tasks and allows their deployment in high-value operations.

Krishnan notes that data literacy is at the heart of any data transformation effort. He says that the world has yet to catch up with the power of data, and data literacy can create awareness.