What I’ve done

Any data professional should be a clear advocate of implementing good data management and governance. Like many apparently self-evident statements, this is not quite as simple as it seems. Consider data quality. The go-to best practice approach is 'Clean at the point of capture'. Which is absolutely best practice if you have first understood why you need to capture that data, whether you have the right source or have already captured it elsewhere, what the full range of use cases are and how quality tolerances will be calculated and measured. This is still less than half the job done though. And that's [...]

The Data Quality Issue Log (DQIL) is a central tenet of any sustainable data governance framework. It is the central repository for the entire organisations data issues, themed by urgency, priority and business alignment. It drives activity for the Data Stewards and acts as a point of accountability for the Data Owners. So why does nobody to care about it then? Mostly because it’s hard to link 500+ issues to something that feels tangible and important. The problem with a DQIL is it is a repository not a source of management information. It is a passive receiver of issues. We want to [...]

. 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 ‘ The Data Governance team is a composite of many skills. You won’t find them [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]