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Who Should Be Responsible For Data?
You're not alone in believing that data and information is the purview of IT and its CIO. Says Redman, "Ask most organizations who is in charge of their data and they'll reply, 'Our chief information officer.' But far too many are really CTOs, where the T stands for technology. They have no influence on bringing data and information to market and little influence on quality. Although they may well define and implement ever-larger databases that make the sharing of data and information technically feasible, they are singularly ill-positioned to convince people and departments that do not want to share their hard-earned data with others to do so."
As a result, most data and information remain unmanaged assets. Redmans' cure? The eventual naming of "true C-band chief data officers."
For most organizations the time's not right yet for this move, he notes, besides the C-suite is "too crowded" at this time. There is work to be done before a CDO is anointed, which includes making strides in the management system for data and information.
Key to the management of data and information include assigning responsibility to the business. This is probably the most important action that should be taken. The various business departments should be responsible for the quality of data they create and for ensuring that people can find the data they need, Redman says. That doesn't mean that IT does not have a role in all this.
Redman says there are five key roles for the IT department. The most important one is "to provide (make or buy, customize, implement, and support) applications to help business processes perform faster, more economically, and with greater capacity." These applications must ensure that people can access and understand the data they need. IT must also help those who use these applications create correct data. Both of these jobs require that applications be tightly aligned with business processes and that those processes are well defined. Moreover, IT should build into its applications the tools needed to create high-quality data. That means tools that have the following:
- Editing capabilities that allow people to correct their own mistakes.
- Measurement capabilities to help process and supplier teams know how well customers' needs are being met and to identify ways to improve the process.
- Utilities that help users quickly and easily learn data definitions.
- Workflow capabilities that manage the movement of work from one group to the next, track cycle time, and track exceptions.
The second role for IT is to be responsible for the technical and communications infrastructure. The third is to implement security and privacy policies. The fourth responsibility is implementing data cleanups. While this should be a task of last resort, it is one that IT should lead when needed. Redman warns that this step should only be taken (there are a few rare exceptions to this rule) if the processes for creating new data are of high quality. The fifth and most complex role involves innovation. IT should keep informed of new technologies and advise process management teams of new ways to design their processes.
If all of this sounds more technical than strategic, it is. Redman believes that it's premature for IT to be viewed as a strategic partner. First, IT must treat process owners as customers with a goal of becoming a trusted supplier to them. Only after achieving that role, he says, should IT even consider becoming a strategic partner.
The quants on Wall Street would have done well to read Redman's book. He warns in it that organizations "do not have top-line metrics for data and information. Nor do they have metrics that connect data and business performance."
Of course, many Wall Street computers had other problems. Their models "radically underestimated the risk of complex mortgage securities," said Saul Hansell in his blog for The New York Times ("Wall Street Lied to Its Computers," September 18, 2008). "Lying to your risk-management computer is like lying to your doctor," Hansell said. "You just are not going to get the help you really need." Alas, computers don't lie, only data does.
Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business Press. Excerpted from
Data Driven: Profiting From Your Most Important Business Asset, published by Harvard Business Press, Copyright (c) 2008 Thomas C. Redman; All Rights Reserved.
Also of interest:
Book:
Data Quality: The Field Guide by Thomas C. Redman, paperback edition published by Digital Press, January 2001. Practical advice for starting and advancing a quality program.
Book:
The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene and Joost Elffers, paperback published by Penguin, 2000. How people use information to acquire enormous power or squander it.
CIOZone Question:
How would you rate the quality of the data in your company's computers? Excellent—Good—Fair—Poor.
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