by Angela Guess
Loraine Lawson recently shared her insights on how to structure business roles for top-down data governance. She writes, “There are a lot of different opinions out there about how to implement data governance. Some offer a more ‘realistic’ approach, while others tout ‘best practices,’ and then there are various recommendations between the two. I suspect the reason there are so many approaches is because there are so many different types of organizations. Traditional, hierarchical organizations will probably deal well with a top-down approach that focuses on best practices and a ‘do-it-right-the-first-time’ approach, while less formal organizations might benefit from a grass-roots, cooperative approach. As data consultant Jim Harris and Forrester analyst Rob Karel smartly pointed out, there’s no need to be extremist about it.”
She adds, “There is one thing, however, that holds true regardless of your approach: The business ultimately needs to own data quality and, therefore, data governance. And with more CFOs concerned with the impact of bad data, I suspect the business will soon be on board with data quality initiatives. Often, when data quality experts talk about the business involvement, they talk about finding a business sponsor and data stewards. But if business is going to own the process, it will need to devote more people and resources to data quality than that, contends Kelle O’Neal, founder and managing partner of First San Francisco Partners, in a recent Beye Network article.”
