Data literacy
People's ability to read, understand, question and communicate data in their daily work, from a chart to a KPI.
Data literacy is the ability to work with data sensibly: read a chart without being fooled by the scale, understand what a KPI measures, tell correlation from causation, spot a suspicious figure and explain a conclusion to others.
It does not mean everyone has to code. It is developed in levels: the basics for all staff (read and interpret), an intermediate level for those who analyse and decide with data, and an advanced level for technical profiles.
It is the other side of data governance: quality data is of little use if the people using it cannot interpret it. And it is the gateway to the AI literacy the AI Act requires: if people do not understand their data, they will hardly understand a model trained on it.
Reference: Art. 4 AI Act (alfabetización en IA)
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← Back to the glossaryUpdated: October 2026 · Informational content, not legal advice.