Data Governance Matters

In recent posts, Reese Thomas and Tom Jesionowski, who sometimes share this space with me, make some good points about situations where strong data governance have aided organizations during the current financical crisis — and how inadequate practices have left others vulnerable.

Their discussion makes me think (for the hundredth time this past month) about things I wish I’d said more strongly. more loudly, more forcefully to corporate executives this past year.

Here’s what I wish I’d said in a way that everyone understood:

If you’re going to make critical business decisions based on information, then you’d better understand how ”fit for use” that information is. You should DEMAND good answers to 3 questions:
 
1. Do I know and trust the source of this data (that I’m using to make critical decisions)
2. Does the data mean exactly what everyone thinks it means?
3. Is the data “good enough” for what I’m using it for?

If you don’t have good answers to these questions, then you’re making decisions based on assumptions. So, if you still have decisions to make, then ask these questions. Demand answers. Don’t get distracted by the fact that answers may rely on complicated technology-centric efforts. Instead, maintain focus. Recognize where assumptions lie, and let your data management folks help you convert those assumptions to actionable knowledge.
 

In Data We Trust (But Wear Protection Anyway)

Reese Thomas

Tom’s latest guest post certainly raises the question of what part did data practices play in this current situation. Bad decisions can, and do result from many other factors than the quality of information available. Data Governance could be viewed as an organization’s immune system.

A fully implemented and mature Data Governance program certainly will not protect an enterprise from risky management decisions; the healthiest immune system will not offer protection for risky behavior such as unprotected promiscuous sex. A compromised immune system will make it much more likely that even a casual contact with a flue carrier will result in transmission, a healthy immune system will help minimize both the rate of transmission, and the severity of the infection.

It could be argued that in many of these cases, plenty of warning signs were in place, I don’t know if the extent that data practices contributed to any one company’s demise could be determined, or how much were just bad decisions. 

Still Tom, in many of the cases I suspect you are right, data practices were a major factor in bad decision-making, and even for the cases that the data was not the (or even a) major factor…

Any physician knows, the better the overall health of any patient, the better the odds of survival for any cataclysmic health event. And that’s certainly where governance comes in. 

In Data We Trust

Guest poster Tom Jesionowski, Prime Data Consulting LLC

These days you cannot open a news portal, magazine, or turn around without hearing about the markets and the crisis in confidence in our markets. I can’t help but wonder what went on behind the scenes and ask what role poor data governance played? Mortgages being bought and sold three, four, or five times, and the data associated with them being merged over and over. Each time details getting dropped or obscured by undocumented ETL and data movement processes.

At the end of the information chain, the data was merged and aggregated forming the foundation for the derivatives sold and resold in the market. At the end of the day (and the boom) ultimately it was in data that we trusted. Data that was so far removed from the real assets that it became nearly impossible to fully evaluate the risk of what was held in the portfolios. The true magnitude of the risk was hidden behind poor data governance.  If the current crisis in confidence doesn’t make the case for data governance then what will it take?