CIPFA includes communication and impact as one of the key competencies for public financial management professionals. That means developing skills in telling stories with financial data.
The ability to take data — to be able to understand it, to process it, to extract value from it, to visualize it, to communicate it — that’s going to be a hugely important skill in the next decades.
As luck would have it, late in 2022 the World Bank published A Guide to Data Storytelling in the Public Sector. The opening chapter is titled From Reporting to Communicating and begins with the above quotation from Hal Varian, Chief Economist at Google.
The Guide explains the elements of a data-driven story are
● The Data — processing and preparing data for analysis and communication
● The Narrative — to communicate insights extracted from data, its context, and recommended actions
● The Language — making the story accessible through simple and understandable language is vital when being inclusive and communicating with a diverse audience
● The Visualization — representations of the data and narrative to communicate the key message clearly and memorably
To save you searching for the document I have attached it to this post.