by Angela Guess
A recent article discusses the challenges of choosing the right data governance strategy for your company, noting, “an information governance strategy needs to be customized to meet the unique needs of a company.” Rob Karel, a data management analyst at Forester Research said, “The key recommendation I hear again and again from those who have been successful is, Don’t pick a governance program that has worked for someone else and try to force-feed it into your company… If you’re a highly decentralized organization with lines of business that operate independently and have their own IT, building a mother-ship organization to tell all those decentralized lines of business what to do will never work.”
The article continues, “Instead, Karel suggested identifying governance advocates within each of the business units and getting them to work together on a cross-functional basis. Looking for similar initiatives that have worked in the past is also a good strategy, he said. For example, if your company has a successful data privacy program that cuts across all lines of business, model your information governance process on it. ‘Ride their coattails,’ Karel advised.”
It goes on, “Information governance plans that start off on the wrong foot often have something in common: a pitch that asks employees to change operating processes or give up something they use for the greater good. As a result, ‘information governance all too often starts from a position of conflict,’ Karel said, adding that a better approach is to create a governance program ‘that solves for everyone’s priorities, not just one group’s.’”
