Introducing the data cleaning day
Madeleine Spinks, Co-CEO
Why on earth did we organise one?
Pretty well every organisation struggles with ‘house-keeping’ when it comes to data. Last October our team held our first whole-company data cleaning day. It was such a success we wanted to share our experience and encourage other organisations to do the same.
“Just 36% say their digital files and documents are well organised and managed!”
We know from our state of the sector data maturity research that there are real challenges around good data management, governance and housekeeping. The tail-end of the data life-cycle – deleting or archiving data — appears to receive the least attention and contributes to a growing digital mess of old data/files that need cleaning up (for some there’s a whole paper mess too). Just 36% say their digital files and documents are well organised and managed!
We’d put it in the diary back in July as an action from our annual data protection and security training session, with the added nudge from our Cyber Essentials Plus certification to keep on top of our data. Last year, we also introduced our company carbon reduction plan and agreed that reducing digital traffic and cloud-data storage is one of the key ways we can act.
Our data cleaning day felt like a non-uniform day at school. It gave us permission to do non-urgent but important tasks, stuff that never needs to be done today so sometimes never gets done.
“Our data cleaning day felt like a non-uniform day at school.”
We approached it by first meeting for 30 minutes to collectively compile a list of tasks (on a google doc), prioritise them and agree who was doing what, and how.
What did we achieve?
We deleted lots of old and archived project files and to-do lists across the tools we use to manage projects, files and time. We updated our data asset list accordingly.
We reviewed and cleaned up our secure password sharing (minimal but important for business continuity) and shut down old or trial accounts for products.
We tightened up on some of our processes around managing, cleaning and archiving data.
We set up regular automatic reminders to delete files (particularly at project closure stage) to keep on top of things and prevent backlogs.
We cleared out our emails, especially large ones with attachments, and unsubscribed from unnecessary mailing lists/newsletters. (Obviously we hope you won’t unsubscribe from ours 😉)
What did we learn?
It was great to data clean together – an opportunity to collectively agree how to approach things and make judgement calls on how to make improvements so it works for everyone.
Everyone agreed it was such a good thing we should definitely do it again (and there was plenty on the list we didn’t get to). Deleting and decluttering is very satisfying.
We discovered some tech issues where links were being created to share files with each other, which created ‘open’ links depending on the way it was done. We now have a list to work through to close these where appropriate and avoid unnecessarily creating open links.
We learnt about the version control built into our file sharing tool and to use that more effectively to avoid creating lots of files.
Shared values don't necessarily mean a shared taste in music! In our enthusiasm to make the day a bit fun we created a ‘data cleaning music’ playlist that team members could add to. Despite some gems in there like ‘Car Wash’ (Rose Royce), ‘We Can Work It Out’ (Stevie Wonder) and ‘Dirty Harry’ (Gorillaz and Bootie Brown), the playlist turned out not to be a success. Some refused to use Spotify on ethical grounds, some said they can’t work to music and some confessed they didn't like their colleagues’ taste in music! But it elicited interesting discussions – turns out some members of the team have music on almost all the time while they work and others need silence.
Spring into action
31% of nonprofits still store data on paper
We recommend you agree on a date well in advance - so you can make sure everyone keeps their diary clear for the whole day! It’s a good opportunity to get spring cleaning firmly in the diary (we just set our next company-wide data cleaning day for early May).
If you’re a large organisation you might want to get some champions from each team together to plan how you’re going to do it, though it’s important team members get to identify their own priorities and work on making their own lives easier.
If your organisation is one of the 31% who say they store data on paper a lot then it might be a good opportunity to get the shredder out and start clearing the backlog.
You might even want to include an element of training – or do it as you go – we are always amazed how many people don’t know how to manage or organise files and folders so it’s easier to find things. It’s well worth putting the time in to collectively agree on a structure.