As the world of data grows, so does the world of stakeholders. It not just the IT department that is concerned with back-ups, storage, security and management of data. Now it’s important for everyone to know what you have, who has access and who is utilizing the data.
The newly (relatively) created CDO position is a perfect example. While it is a work in progress, we see that CDO’s don’t report to CIO’s, CISO’s or CTO’s, but are more likely to be affiliated with the business-side rather than technology-side of an organization. To be successful, that makes a lot of sense. Because the owners of data are not the IT folks, but the people who are actually using the data. And those data owners need to take responsibility for managing what happens with the data. The “data stewards” should be identifiable and tasked with certifying who has access to information.
There is also a need to ensure that the information on hand is of value. That means understanding the data and where it comes from, utilizing tools to correlate information from numerous data sources, identifying what is stale or active and then making business decisions based on the information.
All of this cannot take place under IT – Data Governance is for everyone in your organization.
