Entries Tagged 'Data Governance' ↓

Check out the article “The Death of Dirty Data” published in The Canadian Underwriter (of all places).

It is really well written and focuses on data quality, data governance, and data management.

“Data is the foundation of practically everything that goes on in today’s organizations, and so managing the quality of data is reaching “business-critical” status.”

A very interesting article was written over at the Data Strategy Journal recently - in it they attempted to simply define Data Governance. Easy task right? Not so much. Their method for getting at some definitions was to interview consultants, practitioners, and vendors and asking them to simply “define data governance”. I like the approach of asking people in different positions to define something - this almost certainly ensures diversity since their perspectives are very different. Its a bit frightening to see the many different types of answers, but I certainly understand them since the discipline is still emerging.
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There really is something to be said about dividing up your council to work on separate issues and then reconvening to discuss and approve the results. I’ve used this technique recently for some of the issues on our tracking sheet that ‘just won’t go away’. You probably have these too… whether they be important but nagging issues with the legacy systems or a business unit who just won’t respond so you can close something out. In any case, over time, these outstanding issues will multiply and the best method I’ve found it so assign them out to your stewards to have them worked on. I’ve also found that there are a few keys to success when doing this.
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Here is the latest news in the Data Governance Industry


New Study Shows That Most Firms Struggle with Data Integrity Issues - This article states “most firms struggle with Data Integrity Issues” and lists Data Governance as part of the solution to this problem.

Business Intelligence in Healthcare: The Drivers - Consultant Jill Dyche muses about Health Care issues, and new attempts to fix their old problems.

TIBCO’s New Master Data Management Software Offers Industry-First Feature Set - Tibco has released new Master Data Management Software

Is Informatica An Acquisition Target? - It won’t help you with your program, but if you’re interested in the industry or if you use Informatica, this is an interesting article about how Sramana Mitra thinks Informatica is an acquisition target

Q&A: The Ins and Outs of Enterprise Master Data Management - A good article on the future of MDM

Varonis Joins Data Governance Council Formed by IBM — Some info on Varonis and the IBM Data Governance Council

Wednesday at the conference began the series of shorter sessions. The day kicked-off with the one-hour keynote from Elizabeth Kirscher, President of Morningstar’s Data Services Business. Her presentation, titled “When Data Quality Drives Revenue“, centered around the accomplishments of Morningstar in the data management field and the road that they took to get there. Elizabeth’s background was in sales, so when she began leading the Data Services Business she didn’t quite have the technical background that one would associate with that position. This just goes to show that many data issues reside on the business side, not in IT. In her tenure at Morningstar, where her team is seen as a profit center (lucky her!), she has gone through many regulation and standardizations as well as mergers and acquisitions. Listening to her stories about these business moves was very interesting.
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One document that is an absolute must-have for your program is the “Data Governance Policy Document”. This is a document that states what the Data Governance Office (and council) will not allow. It can also state what you do allow, but I’ve found its easier to just list what is now prohibited. Why is this document so valuable? Because there will absolutely be times when someone wants to do something that the DGO is staunchly against, and having a formal policy in place gives you something to reference rather than just “because I said so”. Putting this document together is fairly easy, below are some tips to get you started.
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Here are a few articles to expand your data horizon…

Governance Portal
This is a pretty good article in DMReview about the beginning stages of data governance. It states that, “data quality is the first step towards a proactive data governance initiative”. Its a very timely post, as I’m headed to the Information and Data Quality conference next week, and it gives a nice perspective to judge the various venders that will certainly be presenting their wares.

What’s exciting about LogLogic?
This short article from Philip Howard reviews LogLogic, a product that enables you to bring all of your log data into a single place for analysis. Phillip acknowledges that logs are a snoozefest, but what LogLogic does certainly seems valuable. He touches on data governance at the end, mentioning that the output of LogLogic analysis will help in the data governance program.

The Impact of Data Governance on M&A
Phillip really cranked out the articles for IT-Director this week… In this writeup he makes the case that if a company wants to be acquired, “then it would be a good idea to have good data governance in place.” Likewise, if you are looking to aqcuire companies, it would be very wise of you to look for companies that have good data governance in place. This is really an interesting read…

This weekend I’m headed out to the Information & Data Quality Conference in Las Vegas. I’m really excited about the conference because the agenda looks awesome (not to mention they also picked a great locale). For all of you unable to attend, you can view the agenda here; this is what I’m going to do… If you have a particular interest in any of the sessions, email it to me, and I’ll attend it and then give you my notes and thoughts on it. In addition, I’ll be blogging throughout the conference about the various events.

If you haven’t yet subscribed to this blog, take a second and do so by entering your email address in the box below. I’m going to pick up some goodies at the conference and give them away to email subscribers! If you’ve already subscribed you’ll automatically be entered.

An important piece of Data Governance is enforcing the policy and governance over data that the council has put in place. This can be one of the most challenging pieces of data governance, and it really occurs at the point where a data governance program and data quality program intersect. The position you don’t want to find yourself in is only being able to find data violations after they occur, through some kind of profiling tool.  While this is certainly a reactive piece you need, you also need to have proactive data governance practices that will find data changes and missuse before it occurs.

Think you’d have to be Nostradamus to do that? Keep reading for 3 ways to be proactive in enfocing data governance policies.
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I posted the Data Governance whitepaper link yesterday thinking that it would be something particularly helpful for data governance practitioners. The press release had just came across my desk and I posted it so that everyone could read it at the same time I did. Little did I know that it was more of a sales document for DataFlux Version 8 - my apologies. I did promise that I would read it and then post my thoughts, here they are: I think if you are looking for a Data Quality product to round out your Data Governance program, this is probably a good read for you. If you aren’t looking for a Data Quality tool, the first page or two are still pretty valuable by way of defining Data Governance and the need for it pretty clearly - you can discard the rest.

So, because I was really looking for something of high-value to provide to you, I’ve spent the last hour searching through all of the Data Governance articles I have bookmarked over the months and one really stuck out. Its an easy read and provides a clear description of where Data Governance belongs in an organization and why.
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