UPDATED 08:08 EDT / JULY 23 2013

NEWS

Advocating a “Crawl-Walk-Run” Approach | #MITIQ

The last day of the MITIQ 2013 Conference was dedicated exclusively to Information Quality. Dave Vellante and Paul Gillin, theCube co-hosts, spent some time speaking with Peter Aiken, Founding Director and Owner at Data Blueprint, about new trends, including those pertaining to company strategy.

“Most companies don’t have a Chief Data Officer. Should they?” asked Vellante. Aiken responded with an answer that left no room for doubt. Carefully describing the chief positions within an organization, he focused particularly on each job’s responsibilities.

“When we think of what a chief officer is in an organization, your Chief Financial Officer is focused on one thing and one thing only, and that’s making sure that your fiscal assets of your organization are available to implement the strategy of the company. They don’t do book keeping. Your Chief Medical Officer is focused on making sure the medical practices in the organization are the highest care, and supporting the goals of the organization. They don’t do surgery. The Chief Risk Officer is focused on the risk aspects of the organization and they don’t do software testing. The portfolio of what we ask our Chief Information Officers to do is enormous, and they are supremely talented and have gotten phenomenally good at what they do. We’re talking email, we’re talking backup and recovery and now we’re adding Big Data topics into this as well. They are, quite frankly, juggling. In order for them to make more with data, something else has to give. As we all know in IT, we can’t afford to let anything lax. The long answer to the question is YES, most organizations need a single individual to focus 100 percent on data, all the time.”

The politics of delegating a single individual with a specific task is not problem-free. While it’s true that “if you’re going to be a data-driven organization, someone has to take responsibility for that data strategy,” it is also true that “one of the problems of creating C-level positions is that other people don’t have to worry about that job.” The CIO is too invested with responsibility for data quality and so it becomes something others do not want to worry about. That attitude might change if data quality were linked with  employees’ wages.

Find the full interview here below:

There are certain aspects of the business that should be everyone’s concern. Take for example the Chief Customer Officer – everyone should be concerned about the customers, not just one person. It’s the same with data. Companies have a CIO, and data is a subset of information. Shouldn’t that role be part of the CIO office?

Aiken argued that in most organizations there are a couple of deficits in the existing structure. IT organizations are project-driven, as they should be and IT projects need to have a beginning, a middle and an end. But the one thing obvious about data is that it doesn’t have a beginning, a middle and an end…

The problems associated with managing data do not stop at who’s responsible for the data. “A lot of the frustration at this conference stems from the inability to connect with the business side, to get the business people interested in the Information Quality,” said Aiken.

Talking about data strategy, Peter Aiken noted: “If we think of strategy from a basics perspective, there’s two dimensions: innovation and efficiency & effectiveness. These are completely opposite, and most organizations are trying to do both at the same time.”

For the data strategy, Aiken revealed, “We’re advocating a ‘crawl-walk-run’ strategy. First, practice what you’re doing. You can put at the top of your priorities list whatever silver bullet of the week but, without a strong foundation, you might eventually get there, but it’s going to take longer, cost more and you’re going to deliver less than the rest of the organizations. Adopting this ‘crawl-walk-run’ approach means first getting good at data management, and then trying to get to the really innovative pieces. I always advocate ‘look to your expenses reduction area’.”

Talking about data in the cloud, Peter Aiken stated:

“Data in the cloud has three characteristics:
1. It should be of higher quality. Why would you put data of lower quality in the cloud? If you don’t know, you need to measure it as it’s going in.
2. It should be less in volume. 80% of the organizational data falls in the category of ROT: redundant, obsolete or trivial.
3. By definition, it should be more shareable. If it’s not, why are you putting it there at all?”

While data is no longer something new, data strategy is still something of a novelty.

“One in ten organizations has a board-approved data strategy. According to a recent survey, the percentage of organizations employing the services of a CDO is even less. 70% of CDOs were hired in the last 12 months. Half of them have no budget, and half of them have no staff. This is a short-term job,” stated Aiken.

Peter Aiken, Ph.D., is one of the top ten data management authorities worldwide. He is a practicing data consultant, author and researcher, and has been studying data management for more than 30 years, consulting with more than 50 organizations in 20 countries across numerous industries, including defense, banking, healthcare, telecommunications and manufacturing.


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