TIPCO – Enforcing Data Governance

Data Governance In 2009

More and more vendors in 2009 will be taking what they learned from past engagements in data governance and formalizing the offerings and maybe even find a way to have it adopted for their particular industry.

Case in point,

IBM Data Governance Council leads XBRL initiative to create new reporting standards for risk measurement.

IBM just recently announced (December 18, 2008) it is seeking input from banks and financial institutions, corporations, vendors, and regulators to create a standards-based approach to risk reporting.

So what is XBRL?  [from the article]

The IBM Data Governance Council is exploring the use of Extensible
Business Reporting Language (XBRL), a software language for describing
business terms in financial reports, to risk reporting. XBRL could be
used to provide a non-proprietary way of reporting risk that could
potentially be applied worldwide. It is already widely used for financial
reporting throughout Europe, Australia and Japan. The widespread use of
this standard ensures adequate skills and understanding among firms and
regulators.

For the complete article:  Click Here

If your company is working on other industry-specific approaches, please share.

Data Governance In 2008

More and more companies are establishing data governance programs across their enterprise to monitor all their information assets.  Another name for these “information assets” is referred to as Master Data, hence the name Master Data Management or MDM.  Information assets can range from: customer, product, sales, supplier, marketing, employee, and so on.

The first formal (and sponsored) data governance initiative I participated in occurred about two years ago (January 2007) with a Fortune 50 company.  The desired result was to initially establish a data governance program, policies and standards, and a corporate wide steering committee where data-centric decisions could be reviewed, prioritized, and budgeted for using enterprise $$$ not divisional $$$.

Key business processes would be integrated (transitioned) on a case by case basis not all at once just because a data governance program at an enterprise level would be setup and operational.  Although, a data governance program may be new to an organization at an enterprise level – it does not mean data governance did not exist before now.

Typically, the biggest challenge is people-related not the business process or technology parts!  The change management or coordination involved in bringing all your people together (IT, Business, Sales, Marketing, etc…) across the enterprise to plan (and execute) such a new approach that includes the “managing of” and “sustaining of” the quality of data is just the beginning.

What Data Governance components have you enabled in your/clients organization?