Democratizing Data Science Is Not As Risky As Many Fear

The role of Citizen Data Scientist has been showing rapid growth, though not without some controversy. Many people are concerned that democratizing data science is about giving people capabilities way beyond what they are ready to handle and, therefore, ensuring disasters as a result. While bad outcomes can certainly happen if things aren’t planned and implemented well, it is possible to minimize risk by approaching a citizen data science program with the right mindset.

I recently presented on a webinar about democratizing data science when a terrific question came in. It was of the nature, “People generally agree that enabling broader access to BI capabilities is safe, but isn’t enabling broader access to data science capabilities playing with fire?” I pointed out that while people think the broad use of BI and visualization tools is safe today, that wasn’t always the case.

When I started my career, there were no BI tools. To create a report, somebody had to hand write code. The only way to generate SQL was to write it. That took a high degree (at the time) of skill and technical ability. Early SQL generators and BI tools were notorious for how easily they could create bad SQL. It was considered risky to have anyone but an expert use them because you had to read the auto-generated SQL to validate it was correct. The tools enhanced productivity, but still needed expertise to use them safely. The idea of broadly deploying them wasn’t on the radar screen initially.

Today, BI and visualization tools are very mature, have ample security features, and are fed by stable, well-defined data. As a result, it is widely considered “safe” to let people who can’t code SQL use these tools for a range of purposes.

Even a hundred years ago cooking was difficult and took skill. Something as “easy” as a cake required a lot of ingredients to be prepared, mixed in the right proportions, and then carefully baked in a wood or coal oven that had no temperature controls. To bake a tasty cake required real skill.

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