by Angela Guess
Loraine Lawson recently responded to an article about MDM best practices written by Albert McKeon. McKeon’s article states, “B. J. Flowers is the director of enterprise information delivery for TXU Energy, a retail electricity provider in Dallas. Her company hasn’t found anyone who wants to manage data. ‘It comes down to governance, and no one wants to do governance,’ Flowers said. ‘There’s no role for that. We tried to do it. It’s not sexy.’”
Lawson responded, “Here I was, all set to write a nice wrap-up about recent MDM best practices pronouncements, when I stumble upon that little item. And it just stops me cold, because, honestly, how can you really talk about better MDM in a world where that’s the reality IT leaders face? No one wants to do governance; it’s not sexy. We shouldn’t be surprised that it’s that bad for some companies. After all, data governance is a whole lot of responsibility, with very little executive interest (or sponsorship) and reward for the person leading it. And the payoff doesn’t come in a direct way. When it comes, it’ll probably be on someone else’s project, under another title altogether, using a BI tool.”
