Blog
Data Owners: first item on their agenda
Once we've identified, allocated and trained our Data Owners then we're done, right? Wrong! This is exactly the time we need to be mentoring that group as their role is not entirely intuitive. Why is that? Well Data Owners should be members of your organisations senior leadership team with functional accountability for a domain. That's a great start, but their data governance role extends beyond that and across the organisation. Inhabiting the owner role may deliver a dis-benefit to their own functional area. That's a whole other post, but today I'm focussing on their other primary responsibility: empowering their stewards. The question [...]
What skills do I need for my Data Governance team?
. A question I’m often asked is ‘what skills do we need to be successful in our Data Governance (DG) Team?’ It’s a good question but it may not be the right one. The more pertinent question is ‘what skills does my organisation need to move to a data culture?’. Let’s try and answer both of those. Firstly, by dispelling two myths. The first is that deep technical data skills are mandatory for the DG team. The second is that some staff get a pass because ‘they don't do data' The Data Governance team is a composite of many skills. You [...]
Does every member of staff really need data skills?
This is the first half of my third article inspired by the HESPA data governance conference back in September 2019. Often the question ‘what skills do I need for this role’ completely misses any consideration of the data skills to be successful in that role. This is both managing data you us, and the skills to interpret data outputs in a consistent and coherent manner. There’s a view that these skills should be project based. I don’t agree. They should instead form part of the ‘skills package’ every employee understands and values. Without some clear guidance embedded in the job role, that [...]
How can I value my data asset?
What do we mean by value? Assets have value. So logically we should be able to agree the value of that asset. Respected metrics to do are understood for finance, people and buildings. These metrics provide some of the framework to manage assets both in terms of their cost to an organisation, and the way that value is demonstrated – be that quantitively and quantitatively. The data asset fails to ascribe to any of those criteria! There's no industry standard or accredited approaches to assessing that value, nor a universal benchmark to cost it. This does raise the question of [...]
HESPA Data Governance Conference – short write up
After the success of this conference, HESPA asked if I could summarise the key points and issues raised. Posting this reminds me I promised two further articles on ‘Valuing the data asset’ and ‘Skills needed for successful Data Governance’. Coming soon, watch this space! HESPA Data Governance Conference review It's hard to know how colleagues will respond after being shown a picture of a car driving into a lake! For context this was a metaphor for 'consequences of bad data' when considering that data 'as the GPS for your strategy'. The theme for the day was the practical application of [...]
The why, how and what of Data Governance
After my last post on ‘How to make the Data Governance business case’, I’ve had requests to share the full slide deck from the event this post originated from. These cover - briefly - the whole data journey plotted out in the schematic above. You can download them below. This was from my session at the excellent HESPA (Higher Education Strategic Planners Association) Data Governance 1 day conference on September 28th, 2019. The next post will be on ‘how to value the data asset’. If you have questions or comments, please do get in touch.
Social