Founded by Steve Albrecht, LuxData supports businesses in their data analytics and makes use of Open Data related to Luxembourg to gather new insights. He tells us more about his business and his community platform Data Studio Luxembourg.
How does LuxData promote data literacy in Luxembourg, and what are their notable data projects?
Launched in 2023 as a data analytics company in Luxembourg, LuxData combines years of experience in data projects with a passion for promoting data analytics and fact-based conversations. We strongly believe that data skills and data literacy should be accessible to the greater public.
Therefore, alongside our core work, we like to make use of the information made public on Luxembourg’s Open Data platform to create comprehensive and informative dashboards and make them freely available to the public. This way anyone can explore and gain exciting new insights in the various topics we uncover. Occasionally, these are also re-published on the Open Data platform, making them available to a wider audience.
Notable projects include dashboards on national facts such as population, unemployment, environmental data, international trade in Luxembourg and the 2023 municipal elections, as well as the Luxembourgish Government’s national Budget ‘De Budget 2023’.
It’s important to us that throughout our work, we make ourselves approachable and promote public data accessibility. Please don’t hesitate to contact us with a wish list of dashboards you would like to see.
What’s the role of Data Studio Luxembourg in advancing data analytics and literacy in Luxembourg?
Data Studio was founded in response to the growing importance of IT and Data Analytics, and the existing national skills shortages within these areas in Luxembourg. As a data inclusion, up-skilling, and re-skilling initiative, it strives to advance data literacy in Luxembourg by fostering a welcoming and exciting environment to learn and engage with data analysis for everyone – for professionals as well as for anyone interested in learning a new skill.
We are driven to share our passion and knowledge about Data Analytics and to support anyone interested in developing data literacy and data analytics skills. With our strong belief in the positive impacts of community, we strive to bring people with diverse personal and professional backgrounds with a shared interest in Data together, and to create a space where experiences can be shared and new ideas can emerge.
By hosting workshops, webinars, and meet-ups, and regularly sharing best practices, Data Studio is a key enabler to help build and shape a data community in Luxembourg. Feel very welcome, join us and become part of the community!
What initiatives does the Ministry for Digitalisation support through the Data Studio project?
Data Studio was selected as one amongst seven projects to be awarded the ‘2023 Digital Inclusion Prize’ (Prix de l’inclusion numérique) by the Luxembourg Ministry for Digitalisation, as part of the annual call for projects from the national action plan for digital inclusion (Plan d’action national d’inclusion numérique).
Launching Data Studio with the goal of building an engaging educational platform as well as a data community for the general public, is quite an undertaking – it’s like launching a new business from scratch, where does one even begin?
Receiving such well-rounded support from the Ministry for Digitalisation throughout all stages of the project – from brand and website development to the organization of workshops and meet-ups – has been tremendously helpful for us to be able to develop our ideas further and translate our vision into practice.
The Ministry for Digitalisation has also supported the promotion and outreach of Data Studio through dedicated press releases and the production of promotional videos.
How can the public access LuxData’s free dashboards, and what data do they cover?
To bridge the gap between learning data analytics as a skill and encouraging fact-based conversations and decision-making, it’s important for us to work with real-world and relevant data related to Luxembourg, and to make the dashboards readily available and easily accessible to the public.
Thereby, our dashboards are mainly based on official statistics published by recognized institutions such as STATEC, Luxembourg Central Bank, IMF, Eurostat, OECD as well as those available via Open Data, and recently the Luxembourg National Data Service (LNDS), Luxembourg’s shared data platforms. Depending on the project we will build and publish dashboards based on other data sources after we’ve established that the source is verified and reliable.
Some examples of the topics our dashboards have been built on are on international trade developments, the national real estate market, as well as unemployment and population.
The dashboards are built using Tableau software and are easily accessible to anyone with an internet connection and a browser on our website. Simply visit our website here and start exploring.
What events does Data Studio Luxembourg organize to enhance data skills in the community?
To promote data literacy and the exchange of knowledge and experiences amongst its community and the general public, Data Studio shares weekly challenges on data preparation and dashboard developments, and best practice examples, in addition to organizing in-person monthly meet-ups, to which anyone interested is welcome to participate in at any point in time.
Data Studio focuses on the development of data analytics skills and literacy by diving deeper into two core stages of data analysis; the first being data preparation (also commonly referred to as Extract, Transform, and Load – ETL), and the second being the visual representation of data, which can take the form of charts, interactive dashboards, or PDF reports.
Advanced aspects of data analytics, such as predictive analytics, machine learning and AI will also be covered at a later stage. These are advanced topics for which we would like to bring in guest speakers to delve into – more to come soon.
The best way to join us and participate is to follow Data Studio on LinkedIn and by visiting our website. You can also become part of the community on meetup.
Editor’s note: The answers above only reflect Steve Albrecht’s opinions, not necessarily those of the Ministry for Digitalistation.
