Data Governance Matters

Reese Thomas

Gwen’s currently on the way back from London, where she’s been cavorting, I mean interacting, with industry thought leaders at the Data Management & Information Quality Conference Europe 2008. She will undoubtedly gift us will some tales from ‘across the big pond’ when she returns, however…

I had to comment on an interesting, thoughtful, compelling and but somewhat disturbing article on BeyeNETWORK by John Myers, ‘Legalizing the Spread(Marts) of Business Intelligence. He draws a parallel between the thirst of power users for data, and the war on drugs. If you haven’t read it I’ll wait…

If you still haven’t read the article, let me give you a couple of excerpts that, while admittedly taken out of context, illustrate some of what I find disturbing. Please keep in mind this article is a thoughtful look at a very real and common situation, not a mindless rant.

“For many years, inflexible data governance organizations and IT departments have put a stranglehold on the development, distribution and consumption of analytical business intelligence applications – or at least they thought that they did.”

“Strident and driven, data stewards can be orthodox or inflexible in their definitions of and application of technologies.”

Wow.

Inflexible.

Stranglehold.

Strident.

Not very semantically flattering to the Data Governance practitioner, and not really evocative of the qualities that most of us would look for in a Data Steward.

It’s the fact that practitioners of a discipline that relies so heavily on communication skills to achieve objectives are regarded in these terms that I find disturbing.

Sometimes, your organization’s governance program may put limits and controls on users. How transparent or intrusive your program will be to the user will depend on many factors; your program’s focus, how the different types of stakeholders are represented, as well as how well the program was designed and implemented. If you happen to be a Data Steward, how stakeholders perceive your efforts to implement these controls depends on just one factor.

Communication.

Use your communication skills evangelistically, to educate and inform. It’s almost inevitable that at some point a stakeholder will be effected by a control; if you are the steward with whom they interact with, it would be nice if the stakeholder were cognizant of the reason for that control.

And not simply think of you as strident.