Executive Summary

• In a calendar cluttered by ‘international XYZ day,’ ‘national XYZ week,’ and so on, what does NDCD actually mean to the public? 
• A recent survey shows data centre awareness is rising but understanding and trust aren’t, which could be key to making the national day work better for the industry.
• What can we learn from other successful national days and weeks, to use NDCD as a tool to change public perception?

 

Happy National Cream-Filled Donut Day. Yes, that’s today’s theme. Fresh from Saturday’s celebrations of National Data Centre Day, and just six days away from International Talk Like a Pirate Day – there is, it seems, a day for everything.

The format has become so familiar that it barely matters where the day came from; it’s a marketeers delight to fill social media with images and hashtags of whatever day it is, every day a week.

National Data Centre Day was launched in the UK in 2025, following the Government’s decision (12 September 2024) to designate data centres as Critical National Infrastructure. 

The day was created to raise awareness of the role data centres play in everyday life and the UK’s digital economy, while helping the public better understand the industry and the people behind it. 

For those of us working in the industry, it might seem obvious. Data centres are behind the digital services we use every day, from online banking and streaming to cloud computing and, increasingly, AI. The sector is becoming more important to the UK’s digital economy and is now firmly part of conversations around energy, investment, planning and infrastructure.

But what does that actually mean to everyone else?

Awareness is rising, but trust isn’t

There is a good reason to be asking the question now. Data centres are becoming much more visible, and the public is starting to notice.

We published an article from Telehouse today; which summarises a survey of 2,000 people. 52% of respondents  now recognise the term ‘data centre’, compared with 40% in 2024. That’s a significant increase in awareness.

But 59% still don’t understand what a data centre actually does. And while more people know about them, positive perceptions haven’t necessarily followed. Just 37% now believe data centres have a positive impact on the digital services they use, down from 48% in 2024. 

Meanwhile, concern about energy consumption has increased from 45% to 56%.

So the industry may not have an awareness problem in quite the way it once did. People are starting to notice data centres. The bigger challenge is helping them understand what they are, why they are needed and what their impact is.

And that’s where National Data Centre Day could become interesting…

What can we learn from other national days?

Not all national days are created equal. Some are little more than an excuse to post something on social media, while others have become useful platforms for education and engagement.

National Apprenticeship Week is a good example. In 2018, the government’s #10kTalks campaign reached more than 33,500 people across more than 300 schools. The important part isn’t just the number, but what happened because there was a national campaign bringing employers, schools, apprentices and young people together.

That feels particularly relevant to data centres.

The industry has a skills challenge, but many people outside the sector probably don’t know what jobs exist within it. A national day provides a reason to get people into schools, introduce them to the industry and show them what actually happens behind the walls of a data centre.

This year’s #BackToSchool theme and the new STEM Ambassadors programme are already moving in that direction.

But there is another lesson from the wider world of awareness campaigns. When the World Health Organization evaluated its global health days and weeks, it found that they can help create visibility, advocacy, partnerships and behaviour change, while also highlighting how difficult it can be to measure longer-term impact.

Which raises a question for the data centre industry: how do we know whether National Data Centre Day has actually worked?

Turning awareness into trust

The industry doesn’t need another day to tell itself that data centres are important. The public is starting to notice them anyway.

What it needs is a way to turn that awareness into understanding, and eventually into trust.

And if we’re going to have a National Data Centre Day, perhaps that’s how we should judge it. Not by how many companies posted about it or how many LinkedIn impressions it generated, but by whether more people understand what a data centre is, what it does and why it matters.

We’ve got 363 days until the next one, to figure it out. And in the meantime, where’s my donut?