Information in useful pieces
A shop may record product names, prices, orders, and delivery addresses. Each is data. Data can be numbers, words, images, or sound. A database is one way to organise it; a spreadsheet or file is another.
Data is useful only in context. “42” might be a price, an age, or an order number. Teams need to know what a value means, whether it is accurate, and who may use it. Information about an identifiable person needs extra care under privacy rules.
Details that describe data, such as when a file was created or what a field means, are metadata.