by Angela Guess
In a new article Kelle O’Neal describes the role of business in data governance. O’Neal states, “With many companies organized along lines of business (LOBs), system and application complexity have increased steadily, decision making has become decentralized and data has become siloed. Critical business information is often unsynchronized across silos and may conflict across systems. Too often, there is no single data steward or even enterprise-level data governance. In this environment, availability and rapid data access are ongoing issues, and poor data quality is eroding business user trust. Without consistent, accurate and reliable enterprise data, an organization can make inaccurate, misleading and incomplete decisions that may have a lasting effect on performance and results.”
O’Neal continues, “Regulatory pressures, executive concerns and customer demands are driving organizations to improve data quality and access, and to treat data as an asset. Many organizations now realize that data governance and control are ever more critical to corporate viability and the ability to compete. The challenge posed by data governance, however, is particularly difficult to address because it is not clear whether the business or IT is responsible for data governance and what roles each should play. The ongoing debate typically focuses on the following questions: (1) Where in the enterprise should data governance sit? (2) Why are data owners necessary if data is owned by the enterprise? (3) Who should spearhead the data governance organization (DGO)? (4) Who is accountable? Definitive answers to these and other questions are elusive. Still, they must be answered before embarking on a data governance initiative.”
