In UK and the commonwealth, we are celebrating 70 years of our monarch. Having published courses on both Data Strategy and IT strategy, I thought it might be fun to look at how these strategies have evolved through the four jubilees of Queen Elizabeth II reign.
The coronation was in 1952, and computer science was still largely a research subject in universities. 1952 saw the creation of the Atlas computer by Manchester University. Businesses though operated without computers, and we saw no data or IT strategies.
The Queen’s silver jubilee was in 1977 and she celebrated by sending her first email! The 1970s was a decade dominated by mainframe and minicomputers. Services used in business to automate the most data and mathematical rich areas. For most businesses, this may have been a small team within the finance department automating the accounts. The IT strategy may just have been a paragraph in the finance strategy noting this new-fangled computer.
The term data science came into existence in the 1960s as a merger of computing and statistical skills. In 1977 the International Association for Statistical Computing was formed. The first phrase of their mission statement reads, “It is the mission of the IASC to link traditional statistical methodology, modern computer technology, and the knowledge of domain experts in order to convert data into information and knowledge.”. This is truly the rise of data science, though in business these data citizens were mainly individuals rather than a team with a data strategy.
By the golden jubilee of 2002 we have jumped through the IBM PC and Apple Machintosh personal computer revolution. The world wide web has taken off and the internet bubble has just burst. For lots of businesses, this was a hard time for the IT Strategy. We had seen significant spending on IT over the build of the internet bubble with the hope of a new e-commerce peak. Now costs had to be cut as the value was written off of businesses. The IT strategy would have talked about right-sizing the IT teams, and reducing costs.
By 2002 data has become part of the performance culture of business, driven in part by Kaplan and Norton’s Balanced Scorecarding. Data teams exist outside of the computer department in the planning, risk, and finance departments. The data platforms of the day are general databases run by the computer department. The data strategy is still a few paragraphs from other functions strategies if mentioned at all.
By the diamond jubilee of 2012, we are seeing data as a strategy for the business in its own right. The data teams may still be embedded within other functions but they have an identity. That identity may be difficult to separate from the Enterprise Data Warehouse and dedicated appliance technology that run the service.
For the IT strategy, 2012 saw the rise of mobile technologies. Every consumer site moving to the palm of your hand in the app revolution. Social media marketing became of age and IT services became key to driving the marketing for the organisation. Even HR transformed to an employee engagement led approach, relying on technology to measure employees feeling about the company. The IT Strategy had a lot of evolution to respond to.
We reach the platinum jubilee of 2022. Where is data strategy and IT strategy now as disciplines? I think well established. To understand more about the current state of these disciplines I recommend taking my courses on Data Strategy and IT Strategy at Udemy.
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Point of fact: accession was on 6 February 1952 (from which the jubilees are counted), coronation was on 2 June 1953. This was not the Atlas era, but the start of the LEO series.
Good catch. Having a senior moment.
LEO would have been a better reference as the true start of commercial computing I would say.