Writing on “How to get started with data governance”, IBM blogger Paula Wiles Sigmon mentions 5 questions an organization should ask itself:
- What are our data standards?
- To whom should the data be available?
- For what purposes should it be usable?
- Do all potential data users share the same definition of the data?
- What is the value of data to our organization?
These are good questions. But I'd put them in a different order. And I suggest that two of them are redundant.
The top question here is the last one in the list. However, it's not as hard as it looks. You don't need to put a number on the value of data to know that data is incredibly valuable. You might as well as ask what the value of oxygen is for people. Your organization can't live without data, but, like oxygen, this fact is taken for granted. Unlike oxygen, data doesn't just appear in the environment in good quantities and usable forms. You've got to manage data. So the question must be asked – not in order to build a business case for data management, but to get the organization to recognize its absolute reliance on data.
Questions 2 and 3 are fine. Questions 1 and 2 are – or ought to be – redundant. The answer to “What are our data standards?” must be “The relevant industry standards”. Therefore I wouldn't ask the question. Use of appropriate industry standards is a matter for policy, not inquiry.
If you are using industry standards, then the question “Do all potential data users share the same definition of the data?” does not need to be asked. It may need replacing with a question about whether all users' applications comply with the industry standards, but that's getting into technical choices.
Maybe I'm being harsh here. If an organization is “getting started with data governance” then these are legitimate questions, and I'm assuming too much knowledge on the part of the governors. This might have been true ten years ago. Today, I think any data governance drive must begin with industry standards. It's no longer acceptable to start on data standards by looking internally. Too much great work has already been done by your industry, and it's available for you to use right now.
Start with standards, and you won't find yourself asking the showstopper question missing from this list: What do we do when we find we can't share data with our customers, partners, regulators, new acquisitions, overseas branches. IBM
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