Introduction

I have been working with data for nearly four decades. I have seen a lot of change in that time and have led many data initiatives, within organisations and at a national level. I have seen great successes with data and I have seen – and been involved with – initiatives that have fallen short, sometimes on a huge scale.

We should celebrate our successes and the amazing things that we can do with data in the twenty-first century. We must learn from our failures because sometimes there is greater value in learning from what went wrong.

This paper sets out a model based on some personal observations about our relationship with data and how that has changed since the 1980s. The model is framed in the context of Moore’s Law and, with the greatest respect to the memory of Gordon Moore, I offer these ideas as Youell’s Law and set out the implications for how we derive value from data.

Contents

1. Moore’s Law – what it was and what it has become

2. Introducing Youell’s Law – what it is and why it matters

3. Great expectations

4. Implications for data developments

I present these ideas as a work-in-progress and welcome any feedback.

Andy Youell, September 2026