Data Governance Blog

A Simple Choice

Right now many enterprise data producers behave like monopolies. They set the standards for what they produce and the downstream applications have no choice but to take what they get. This is a fundamental problem with most enterprise data architectures. This behavior encourages chaotic environments and cost business billions of dollars in wasted effort.

Where else in the open marketplace, does the producer set the quality standards? As a society when we need to have a sole supplier of anything we regulate that supplier. We do it with water, food, power, and communications. Data on the other hand is left to the producers to determine quality and that is simply wrong and expensive. So how do you fix it? You regulate that sole supplier and you look to the consumers to set acceptance standards.

One of the easiest and fastest ways to gain control over your enterprise data systems is to implement governance control standards at converging points in your data architecture. The authors of the DG standards should be the owners of the downstream applications and systems. The upstream application owners should be rewarded for their data quality and meeting those standards. When a problem with the standards compliance exists, it is the upstream application that should be required to adapt and conform. Not the other way around, as is typically the case.

This is a fundamental change to most businesses and, as such, that makes it a tough sell. In a typical company the customer facing application is king and is often the biggest sponsor of IT projects. They are used to getting their way and don’t want to bear the burden or cost of data governance. What I can tell you from having watched the largest bank failure (to date) from the inside, the cost of business as usual is much scarier. Now choose your path.

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Thanks for stopping by. My writing is intended to take a lighter look at Data Governance, and toss in some pragmatic advice along the way.  If you are interested in more information on how to implement Data Governance in your organization, please contact me via LinkedIn or the email address below.

Regards,
Tom Jesionowski

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