DataFlux

I like to tune in to The Situation Room on CNN, hosted by my man Wolf Blitzer. Recently Wolf had former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in the hot seat. Albright did a respectable job volleying Wolf’s hardball questions. At one point, when she expressed lack of confidence in the administration’s ability to interpret intelligence, Wolf broke in and asked, “Because of the poor information that led to the war in Iraq?” “No,” Albright answered. “Because of the lack of sound decision making capabilities brought to bear on how that information was used." Regardless of your politics if you’re a data person this incident should resonate. Albright was basically confirming a point that those of us in data management know all too well: Information misinterpreted is bad enough. But the decision-making processes about how to gather, use, and define information, and the accountability for those decisions, can be even more critical. This is data governance in a nutshell. A lot of our clients and prospects use the word governance—pardon the pun here—too liberally. In our latest book, Evan and I talk at length about the difference between data governance (the decision and accountability framework for managing data as an asset and defining policies around that data) with data management (the day to day activities involved in implementing those policies). Work like data profiling and metadata management falls under the latter category. Business data stewards deliberating on how internal and external compliance rules determine who can view a customer’s social security number falls into the former. Governance is policy-making. As we say in our book, it’s the oversight of corporate data—the “whos” and the “whys.” Management is the “whats” and the “hows.” Your accountant will help you manage your money, but he won’t “govern” it for you. Until we start practicing both data governance and data management in sanctioned and formalized ways, our ongoing decision making about information is likely to remain a “situation.” Confidential to DataGuy in New York: Okay, I’ll bite. Here goes: 1) Trader Joe’s frozen organic brown rice. 2) Meyer Lemon and Key Lime Chocolate Almonds by “Magic Dreams.” (You can get them on and off at Costco.)