DATA MANAGEMENT RESPONSIBILITIES
From the Data Management Specialist Group definition, it can be deduced that data management is a corporate service that:
strategically supports the corporate definition, management and use of business data;
operationally supports the development and maintenance of computerised information systems.
To meet its remit to provide strategic and operational support to the organisation, the data management function has a number of responsibilities. The key areas amongst these responsibilities are:
achieving recognition of data, both structured and unstructured, as an enterprise-wide valuable business resource;
improving the quality of the data held within the enterprise’s information systems and ensuring that there are procedures in place to maintain the quality of the data;
facilitating information sharing across the business by the provision of corporate data definitions and support to systems-development teams to ensure that these definitions are used;
making the various levels of management within the business accountable for the development and ownership of data definitions – it is within the business, not in IT or IS, that the real meaning of data and information is known;
achieving a single source for reference data to support all the information systems within the enterprise – this includes internal reference data, such as product codes and prices, as well as external reference data, such as UN country codes.
The degree of accountability that the data management function has depends on its reporting level in the organisation. The lower the position in the organisational hierarchy, the more limited the responsibilities are likely to be. It naturally follows that the more limited the responsibilities are, the less impact the data management function can have on the organisation’s use of data and, thus, the benefits reduce accordingly.
To fulfil the above responsibilities, the data management function needs to identify the specific activities that it needs to carry out and then obtain sufficient resources to perform the activities. These activities are shown in Figure 3.1.
FIGURE 3.1 Data management activities
An important early activity for the success of any data management initiative is to educate all concerned about the importance of data management to the organisation and the role that they play in data management. This education, of course, involves the staff directly involved in the data management function. It must also be directed towards the business and user community at all levels, from senior management through to the end-users of the information systems who may be responsible for collecting and inputting data, and also at the technical staff in the IT or IS department who need to follow and use the products delivered through data management. If application development is ‘outsourced’ then those involved in the procurement procedures must also be made aware of the importance of data management so that they can ensure that adherence to the data management standards is included in the contracts with the development company.
Another important early task is to develop the organisation’s data management policy and strategy. The policy document sets out what the business expects from the data management initiative and how business managers, end-users of the information systems and the IT or IS staff relate to the data management staff. This needs to be endorsed at the highest level within the organisation. Once the policy is endorsed, it is possible to develop the strategy of how to meet the data management goals and targets.
One of the principal tasks of data management is to develop the corporate data definitions for the organisation. Key to this is the development of a data model, or a set of data models, that encapsulate all of the business organisation’s information needs. The data definitions can then be derived from these models. Each data definition must be ‘owned’ by an appropriate business authority, and data management must seek out a suitable owner. The data models and the ownership are the ‘front of house’ facets of data definition. Behind the scenes, there needs to be a number of standards covering the way that data models are to be developed, the format that data definitions are to take and the way that data ‘objects’, such as entities, attributes, tables and columns, are to be named.
Data management is a complex activity and it is doubtful if much will be achieved without some automated tool support. There is a need, therefore, to identify and procure these tools and a need to have procedures in place to ensure that the tools are used consistently and that the information stored in the tools is available when required.
If data management is to be successful, it must influence the way that data is defined and handled in any new or replacement systems. It is very important, therefore, that the data management staff interact with and support the system-development staff. It is too easy for systems developers to see any standards, including standard corporate data definitions, as constraints on their freedom of action and, maybe, a potential source of delay to the completion of their project. The interaction between data managers and system developers must be managed so that the system developers see the data managers as a positive resource that are of benefit to their project.
Once data management is up and running, the data management staff probably have a greater knowledge than the business staff of what data and information is available within the organisation, where it is available and how it is used. The data management staff can, therefore, provide a valuable information service to the business and to the IT or IS staff. They can, in effect, provide a ‘one-stop shop’ for information about information and data.
As with any other function, functional management has to be in place to ensure that all of these activities are co-ordinated and facilitated. There must be adequate resources to carry out the activities. The activities must be prioritised and planned so that the service provided by the data management function provides the support to the organisation that is expected and required.
Figure 3.2 shows the key deliverables to be expected from each of these activities.
The IT or IS department is often cast in the role of ‘advocate’ for the creation and implementation of a data management function. It is often the view of the business that the management of data is solely the responsibility of the IT or IS staff. Certain aspects of physical data management, such as database administration, do naturally fall within the overall IT or IS responsibility, but the management of data and its associated information, as an asset to enable the business to exploit its huge investment in data, is very much the responsibility of the business and, as such, the business must sponsor it and be involved in it.
Rather like a vehicle (as in Figure 3.3), the ‘data management front wheel’ may steer us down a particular path, but only the ‘business rear wheel’ can provide the power to drive us forward.
FIGURE 3.2 Data management deliverables
FIGURE 3.3 The business drives; data management steers
