The importance of using a Data Life Cycle in the new digital world

The Cambridge Dictionary ¹ states that data is “information, especially facts or numbers, collected to be examined and considered and used to help decision-making, or information in an electronic form that can be stored and used by a computer”.

The digital evolution has bringing a significant transformation in our connected world, as a result of this, a huge amount of data is generated and collected every day from different sources and in order to stay competitive and to help decision making, organizations are always trying to extract value from this vast source of information, therefore, data is being considered the most valuable asset an organization has, consequently it is vital for organizations to know what data they have and classify them based on their value in order to protect them.

A data life cycle (Figure 1) is a framework with all the stages/activities that data has to go through from its creation, processing, analysis, storage and sometimes disposal.  Considering the pivotal role which data plays worldwide nowadays, the usage of a data lifecycle is indispensable, as it can assist the organisations to ensure that data is collected and prepared for the intended usage and end users.

Figure 1 – Example of IoT infrastructure with data lifecycle

References

• J. Jin, J. Gubbi, S. Marusic and M. Palaniswami, “An Information Framework for Creating a Smart City Through Internet of Things,” in IEEE Internet of Things Journal, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 112-121, April 2014.
• Cambridge Dictionary: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/