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Chapter 14 |
The time has come for me to put the finishing touches on this Non-Invasive Data Governance book. As I mentioned in the beginning, this book has been a long time coming. The problem was not that I didn’t have the materials available to me. The problem was getting the words down on paper so that the content and flow of the book would be beneficial to all of its readers.
When I coined the phrase “Non-Invasive Data Governance” close to ten years ago, it was an expression that described the first approach I took in implementing stewardship for data at a large Blue Cross Blue Shield plan in Pittsburgh in the early 90s. Little did I know that it would become the passion behind my own consulting company, a reason for this book, and a way that I could benefit the organizations implementing data governance and their customers, members, students, participants, and partners in whatever business the organization was in.
As a data administrator for the Blues early in the 90s, I thought I was early to the breed. To learn what it meant to be a data administrator, I subscribed to several technology-based magazines. I came across an article by Larry English titled “Accountability to the Rescue.” The article stated that we could improve everything about data—the quality, the protection, compliance, interoperability, and value. This basically came to the rescue with data management, by applying accountability to managing data as an asset. And yes, people in the know did use the term, “data as an asset,” even back then.
Several times I’ve gone back and tried to locate that article on the Internet to no avail. I’ve lost touch with Larry over the years, but before we lost track of each other, I made certain to thank him for writing that piece and to let him know he helped me set a new direction for my career. Larry and I had several discussions regarding Non-Invasive Data Governance over the years. I owe a lot to Larry. We all owe a lot to him.
Larry used the term “information steward” to describe people who had accountability for data. The Non-Invasive Data Governance approach focuses on helping everybody who defines, produces and uses data in an organization. This is basically everybody, including the operational data stewards, to be held formally accountable for how they define, produce, and use data.
The key word here is “accountability.” It’s been my belief since my early days in data management that everybody is a data steward. I have stated that managers will be the first to tell you that everybody needs to be held accountable. They will question why people right now are not held formally accountable, and they may go as far as saying that we need to do everything in our power to hold our people accountable. To me, this is common sense.
A great question I often get is, “How do we hold everybody accountable?” And my answer is through the Non-Invasive Data Governance approach. People are already informally accountable. Let’s formalize that accountability rather than handing it to people as something that’s entirely new.
I’ll use this last chapter to remind you of some of the most important aspects of the Non-Invasive Data Governance approach and wrap up the book with the Data Governance “Bill of “Rights.”
Summarizing the Non-Invasive Data Governance approach
Non-Invasive Data Governance is communicated as something that already takes place in your organization in an informal, inefficient, and often ineffective manner. The Non-Invasive Data Governance approach focuses on formalizing existing levels of accountability and addressing lapses in formal accountability, and it typically costs only the time put into the effort. In other approaches, data governance is communicated as expensive, complex, time consuming, and over and above the existing work culture of an organization. Remember:
- Being non-invasive with the approach is less intimidating and threatening. The Non-Invasive Data Governance approach is designed to fit the culture of an organization and to take advantage of existing levels of governance. It’s not an encroachment. In other approaches, data governance is viewed as a discipline that adds unnecessary rigor and bureaucracy to business processes, thus slowing delivery cycles and making data more difficult to access and use.
- By staying non-invasive with the approach, people see that governance adds value rather than impeding progress. Expectations about the Non-Invasive Data Governance approach are set by assisting business areas to recognize what they cannot do because the data of an organization will not support their activities. With other approaches, data governance expectations are set by the team of individuals responsible for the design and implementation of the data governance program.
- Mapping data governance to solving business issues helps to describe data governance as something a business needs rather then what “data people” want to put in place. With non-invasive data governance, individuals are identified and recognized with roles associated with their existing relationship to data—as data definers, producers, users, subject-matter experts, and decision makers. With other approaches, individuals are assigned new roles as part of their involvement in a data governance program.
- Recognizing people for their relationships to data and helping them to understand that how they manage data impacts people and businesses across an enterprise. With non-invasive data governance, individuals’ job titles do not change, and it is acknowledged that the vast majority of their responsibilities will not change. With other approaches, individuals are given the title of “Data Steward,” and their job responsibilities are adjusted accordingly.
- The people of your organization have day jobs. Unless you change their “day jobs” (very difficult to do), people will have to absorb their steward responsibilities for data governance to succeed. In the Non-Invasive Data Governance approach, more than one data steward—a formally accountable person—is associated with each type of data. That’s because an organization recognizes that multiple people share this association with data, i.e. multiple users of particular data. With other approaches, individuals are assigned as individual data stewards for specific subject areas of data.
- Everybody stewards data depending on their relationship to data. Organizations apply non-invasive data governance principles to existing work flows and processes by formalizing discipline, accountability, and involvement around these processes. With other approaches, organizations refer to processes as “data governance processes.” Doing so incorrectly gives the impression that the processes are carried out, because of the data governance program.
- Data governance is all about the execution of authority over the management of data and data-related assets. The authority comes through the application of governance to existing processes and workflows. In other words, getting the “right” people involved in the “right” process … Read the next section for the complete Data Bill of “Rights.” The truth is that a Non-Invasive Data Governance program can be managed from a business unit or information technology (IT) unit, as the business areas and ITs hold specific knowledge and formal accountability relative to governing data as a valued enterprise effort.
Data Governance Bill of Rights
As Wikipedia tells us, “A bill of rights is a list of the most important rights to the citizens of a country. The purpose of these bills of rights is to protect these rights against infringement.”
The term “bill of rights” originated in England. Here, the term refers to the Bill of Rights enacted by Parliament in 1689, following the Glorious Revolution, asserting the supremacy of Parliament over the monarch and listing a number of fundamental rights and liberties.
You may ask yourself what this has to do with data and data governance. My answer is: everything and nothing. I could have written about the rights of employees or members of your organization to have high quality data that better enables them to perform in their job functions. I’d hasten to add that it’s the goal of any data governance program to provide these individuals with data and information that helps them and their organizations succeed.
Instead, I’ve chosen to summarize this book by writing about specifically different rights of a data governance program. By this, I mean the right things to do to get your data governance program to operate the way you want it to. This Data Governance Bill of Rights consists of the right behaviors needed and expected to achieve the optimum results from your data governance program.
My definition of data governance is: The execution and enforcement of authority over the management of data and data related assets.
And my definition of data stewardship is: The formalization of accountability over the management of data and data-related assets.
This is about the enforcement of authority through the formalization of accountability that best describes a Non-Invasive Data Governance program. Taken together, the enforcement and formalization require:
- Getting the Right People,
- Involved at the Right Time,
- In the Right Way,
- Using the Right Data,
- To make the Right Decision, and
- Leading to the Right solution.
Let’s review these points one by one.
Getting the Right People
This is perhaps the easiest right to address. These individuals define, produce, and use your data. You inventory the data—not necessarily all your data—and cross reference your data with these individuals or parts of the organization that define, produce and use the data.
This may sound like a monstrous task, but the truth is it can, and should, be done incrementally. You can complete this just by using information about who was involved during recent and present data-focused initiatives. The best tool to conduct this inventory is the Common Data Matrix discussed in Chapter 11.
Involved at the Right Time
To address this right, simply use the Data Governance Activity Matrix, also presented in Chapter 12. A caveat here: Just because you create a Data Governance Activity Matrix for a specific process or procedure doesn’t turn this process or procedure into something called a data governance process. If you call something a data governance process, you define data governance as the villain and as an additional burden on individuals that slows things down. The fact is all processes can be governed, whether or not data governance is involved.
In the Right Way
This may be the most difficult right to get right. This right involves making certain that the steps down the left side of the Data Governance Activity Matrix are the correct or at least, most appropriate actions to take.
This is where data governance really comes to life, or becomes difficult depending on your perspective. Completing a Data Governance Activity Matrix for your system development life cycle (SDLC) can be simple because the steps of the process already exist and can be leveraged.
Completing a Data Governance Activity Matrix to make sure regulatory and compliance rules are captured, communicated, and followed can be complex.
This right is the most critical of the Data Bill of “Rights.” The methodologies, processes, and best practices most likely exist somewhere in your organization. If you simply cross reference the properly governed steps of the activity with the right people, you’re taking steps to formalize accountability and to become more efficient and effective in your processes and most likely in the governance of data.
Using the Right Data
This right can be tricky as well. Many organizations have no definition of what right data is. This makes it all the more difficult to fix the wrong data or get to the right answers.
For example, let’s say you have an enterprise-data warehouse that’s working perfectly and you have a master data solution in place; you know where your systems of record are for your data and can direct people to these data. If all this is true, your situation is pretty good.
If you’ve governed the steps of your formalized process (see previous rights), you can apply pointing to the right data as part of your processes. Does this make sense? My recommendation is to make getting to the right data an important part of the processes and procedures you govern.
To Make the Right Decision
Often, the right decision is based on the right data, but not always. Getting the right decision is often based on the right person making that decision with the right data.
Ultimately, right data leads to the right decision. But often no assurance exists that a decision is correct until time has passed, and you validate the decision through business activity.
At the risk of sounding obvious, let me say that for the right decision to work out right, the solution that follows this decision must also be right. This may fall back on the use of a Data Governance Activity Matrix to map the steps used to follow through on the right decision.
Leading to the Right Solution
Now, we come to the end of the Data Governance Bill of Rights and this book. Getting to the right solution is the purpose of your data governance program. I can’t think of a simpler way to describe what your data governance program should do.
If you approach your senior managers and tell them you have an easy way to get the right people involved at the right time in the right way using the right data to get to the right decisions and solutions, they’ll most likely ask you how. This is where you fall back and use the tools mentioned in Chapters 9, 10 and 11.
I hope you’ve found this book to be helpful. Please feel free to contact me to discuss how the Non-Invasive Data Governance approach works for you and your organization: [email protected].
Good luck to you and your team. And remember:
Get started and stay non-invasive.