New Zealand's Crown Research Institute CDAO, Jan Sheppard on Treating Data as a Treasure

Key Moments:

• How do you make vastly different data work together at ESR? (07:12)
• Treating data as a treasure (11:43)
• How do government and private companies look at data differently (13:50)
• How do you guard against the misuse of data? (18:39)
• Dangers of misinterpreting the models and need for data-savvy (21:16)
• Jan’s data North Star - recognizing the value of the data (25:10)
• Goal to create digital twins to help address climate change (30:13)
• Working around the difficulty of unstandardized ESG reporting (34:05)
• Maori values and data at ESR - the life force of data (40:35)

Mentions:

• The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution book by Walter Isaacson
• ESR's Data Strategy

Key Takeaways:

How can Digital Twins help address critical climate change impacts in Pacific island nations? (30:52)

“I'm driving towards digital twins. Not a new concept in a lot of fields, but certainly for us it is...One area [which] is particularly important for us is climate change. We are doing some work in the Pacific islands at the moment. And the Pacific islands are an amazing scientific opportunity. There is a burning platform when it comes to climate change. The amazing scientific opportunity is their closed ecosystems. So we are able to see what's changing in drinking water. What's changing in soils, the people's health, food supplies as temperature rises, even by a degree, and taking this digital one approach, if we're modeling out people’s health and the environmental health, we can overlay those two together, we're able to see the impact of climate change in one space and how it affects another.”

Creating digital twins for Pacific island nations is proving to be especially helpful to ESR as they work to help address climate change impacts. Each system that they’re able to model with digital twins, from the water, to the soil, to public health, is in a closed ecosystem. This allows them to layer complex factors, to get a more accurate picture of what is going on, and how they might be able to take steps to mitigate future impacts.

What does it mean to treat data as a treasure? (12:15)

“In New Zealand, we have a word ‘taonga,’ and that means a treasure, a gift from the past to the future. And that's how we see our data. So if we look after our data, if we store it while we have standards, we keep it in current formats that it's able to be consumable. It's discoverable. We can use our data over and over and ask new questions of our data as the future unfolds that we didn't know to ask at the time. So it is a window from the past, into the future. And by considering it a treasure really shapes how we care for it. And what's, what's important to preserve into the future, not discarded as soon as it doesn't have any commercial value, but hold onto it because it's something that the future might need.”

In a departure from many private sector organizations, Jan and her team at ESR know the value of data goes far beyond answering today’s questions. Realizing that future generations may have new challenges to solve with a historical data set, they put extra care into keeping it discoverable and consumable.

Why is it important to take extra care when setting ESG standards? (34:58)

“You get what you measure; so make sure we define the purpose of ESG and make sure we're very, very clear on why this is important and what we want to get out of it, because if we just put some measures in place, we're at risk of breaking the system. We are in times of significant change, exponential change, even, and by bringing in a driver like ESG we rightly should be making improvements. It's right to call this out because we do need to be moving forward collectively as well as individually in the space. But we've gotta be really clear that we are creating the right future and not breaking the future by not knowing what's important, not clearly defining it so that we can be measuring the right things.”

Jan cautions for thoughtful consideration of what ESG reporting standards should be set and adhered to. The consequences of actions taken today permanently change the future, and as she puts it: if we aren’t clearly defining or measuring impacts, we are at risk of breaking that future.

Key Quotes:

Our data is our community and our environment, and particularly when we're dealing with DNA, it adds another dimension to our responsibilities, and also what we can see… When we are dealing with DNA, we are dealing with ancestors of the person whose DNA it is; we're dealing with them in the present time and also future generations that are yet to be born. So we have quite different responsibilities from a moral and an ethical perspective when we are dealing with some of the data that we do. It adds a respect to our work that we wouldn't perhaps otherwise have.

In New Zealand, we have a word ‘taonga,’ and that means a treasure, a gift from the past to the future. And that's how we see our data. So if we look after our data, if we store it while we have standards, we keep it in current formats that it's able to be consumable. It's discoverable. We can use our data over and over and ask new questions of our data as the future unfolds that we didn't know to ask at the time. So it is a window from the past, into the future. And by considering it a treasure really shapes how we care for it. And what's, what's important to preserve into the future, not discarded as soon as it doesn't have any commercial value, but hold onto it because it's something that the future might need.

ou get what you measure; so make sure we define the purpose of ESG and make sure we're very, very clear on why this is important and what we want to get out of it, because if we just put some measures in place, we're at risk of breaking the system. We are in times of significant change, exponential change, even, and by bringing in a driver like ESG we rightly should be making improvements. It's right to call this out because we do need to be moving forward collectively as well as individually in the space. But we've gotta be really clear that we are creating the right future and not breaking the future by not knowing what's important, not clearly defining it so that we can be measuring the right things.

Bio:

Jan Sheppard is the Chief Data & Analytics Officer at the Institute of Environmental Science and Research where she is responsible for leading the data practice including data science and computational science. Her work includes building new worlds through data to gain insights into how changes in the environment impact on human health, which is critical to understand as we face the reality of climate change.

Jan is a pioneer in pushing boundaries of how data can create value beyond what is imaginable. Jan has built a start up in the middle of an established organisation to create the culture and way of working around data needed to take the organisation forward into the future. And is always building out an ecosystem through data that goes beyond the organisation she works for to enable informed system level thinking.

Jan was acknowledged as one of the top 100 innovators in data and analytics in the world in 2020, and has enjoyed many opportunities to share her vision for data and achievements internationally.