How Metadata Measures Positive Peace and Transforms Business
Business data implementation allows for redefining business and business strategy. The usage of metadata unlocks a new source of information and value for the company. The integration of this form of data with businesses and operations perspective will help organizations better understand their business. As many put it is a form of “Unlocking the real value in your business information systems”. The further integration of peace data to metadata will give insights on the positive change companies are creating.
‘The Data about Data’
Metadata, is the data that describes other data. A more complete definition is given by Dempsey and Heery “Metadata is data associated with objects which relieves their potential users having a full advance knowledge of their existence or characteristics.” Metadata is always associated with an object, and although it has no meaning by itself, it provides very powerful insight and trends in our data.
Social media users use metadata all the time when posting pictures, this allows for them to create a site with more relevant content for their users. Hashtags are a way of providing metadata, they allow for narrowed down searches. By comparing all hashtags, we can understand what people are posting, looking for or what is popular in a particular moment in time. To understand this type of metadata brings insights to business and marketing that can guide decision making and strategic planning.
Metadata tells us about the data we have, what it means, whether or not the quality of it is appropriate for its intended use, where it comes from and whether it has been processed, who owns it and who has access to it, circumstances that need to be taken into consideration when reading the data, and who is a frequent user, which can derive on the creation of usage profiles. Metadata therefore helps understand a project, experiments, or organizations at several levels.
The utilization of metadata remains one of the top priorities for IT executives in their ongoing challenge of “making better use of information.” But the challenge of metadata is not only IT related. Corporate managers focused on strategic planning and forecasting, increasing efficiency and performance, or overseeing day to day operations can also benefit immensely from its applications.
What is the Value of Metadata for Managers of an Organization?
We can summarize with the following some of the more explicit value of using metadata in organization:
Improving search and organization
Decreasing Software associated cost
Improving SEO and Marketing
More powerful data analytics
Improving decision making, efficiency, performance and management
Making governance easier
Understanding the external environment.
Having an understanding of a company’s metadata can have a significant impact on the overall efficiency. It is a tool that allows for better organization and search, reducing time and providing easier access to the data. Data analysts spend “90% of their time locating, cleansing and configuring data from various sources.” reducing this time will therefore have an overall effect in productivity and costs. Improving management processes will also be beneficial for the quality and accuracy of the data being produced. Which eventually impacts decision making and forecasting. Big companies like Google, Facebook or Amazon are already using metadata to improve their SEO and marketing strategies.
Using Metadata to Measure Positive Peace
A compelling use of metadata within an organization is to gain insights and understanding of positive interactions that occur between employees that cross “difference boundaries”, including: gender, race, location, etc. Positive interactions that cross these differences is now called “Peace Data” and provide organizations a way to use metadata that is already created in email and other electronic communication to construct an analysis of internal levels of interactions that promote positive outcomes.
Mark Nelson talks about the peace data collected by many technology platforms that is “hidden in plain sight”.
“Tons of companies have this kind of peace data and they are generating it all the time and we are looking at how to use that data to do good in the world and at the same time change global financial market signals. The result of that is that intersection of maximizing social good, while avoiding as much as possible potential downsides.”
Businesses generate positive value to society while increasing their trust levels and efficiency between employees through positive interactions.
Swoop Analytics focuses on the power of collaboration to increase efficiency in the workplace. The act as consultants for organizations to identify organizational networks and the most valuable metrics to drive collaborative business performance.
They performed an experiment “deep listening” at scale in several organizations and found insights on how women are better at building “more dense reciprocal relationships” and they were also found to be better at engaging with their male coworkers. Understanding these types of interactions and gaining insights into positive and collaborative relationships within organizations allows executives in the company to promote a more efficient workspace.
In the paper “Peace Data Standard: A Practical and Theoretical Framework for Using Technology to Examine Intergroup Interactions” It is suggested that the understanding of peace data plays a key role in revealing “largely unseen, invisible relationships and dynamics within those relationships.” Moreover, a step towards a prosperous direction involves the use of peace data in determining an economic value for peace.
Metadata of Peace data allows for the understanding of the mechanics involved in group interactions that end in positive outcomes. Metadata allows us to track these type of interactions across time, and through group identities.
“Peace metadata can provide information about peace through positive engagement on different scale measurements, level of engagement episode or length of interaction. “
Capturing data that measures relationships between coworkers and their associated metadata can give powerful insights into our business dynamics as well as being a tool for measuring positive impact in the world.
Conclusion
The use of metadata can be very beneficial for the growth and understanding of businesses in many forms and at different levels. It is a very powerful tool for decision making, improving efficiency and data quality. When dealing with data ethical issues on data privacy always rise, and they must therefore be examined with careful consideration.
When Peace Data is added to the equation the use of metadata can be very powerful to understand and scale up the positive impact being created. For companies capturing metadata on the positive interactions of the workspace, it makes a positive impact visible to the world and gives the opportunity to get revenue on it.
How many difference boundaries are being crossed on a daily basis by the interactions of the workers of your organization? Are different diversity groups interacting with each other? How much positive peace is your business generating?
These are questions we should all be asking. Understanding positive interactions in the workspace is a powerful tool to measure an organization’s positive impact in the world.