I came across a news item talking about the IBMs top 5 predictions for Data Governance (http://www.ebizq.net/news/9883.html?rss). These predictions are coming out of IBM Data Governance Council, comprising 50 top-notch companies from wide range of sectors.
While the predictions were interesting and point to a brighter future for data governance, this one raised some level of dissonance. As a general disclaimer, I beg pardon if I have mis-interpreted the text of this prediction. These are only initial thoughts, and I do plan to dig out more. Please cascade this blog post to your network as it can generate some healthy discussion.
The text of that prediction is-
‘The role of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) will change making this corporate officer responsible for reporting on data quality and risk to the Board of Directors. The CIO will have the mandate to govern the use of information and report on the quality of the information provided to shareholders.’
My Dissonance- I don’t agree that CIO role should be taking the ownership of reporting on information quality as well as governing the use of information. It may lead to role conflict and de-focus the CIO role. These are the questions, I will seek clarifications on to address my dissonance:
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CIO’s core role is to be a strategic internal service partner to the business and operations to ‘make it happen’. Should we be mixing the role of a service provider to a quasi-governance and oversight role.
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Will we not create a confusion between the roles of Audit, CFO, Internal Control and Data Steward (if you have one)? I feel that there can be enough roles to oversee and audit. The issue today is more towards owning and delivering on the tasks related to data governance.
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A CIO cannot have the mandate to report on the quality of the information provided to shareholder. This may set him/her up for failure. This has to be a business role, which encompasses not only IT, but the business processes, manual controls, compliance and regulatory checks outside of systems etc…Aren’t we conflicting this role with that of a CFO and CEO? CIO may be responsible for certifying that the data lying in the systems is consistent. However, how can the CIO take the ownership to govern the manual adjustment figures entered by finance at the period-end processing??
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If something is wrong with the information provided to shareholders, where the buck will stop? Will it be the CIO or CFO?
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CIO cannot have the mandate to govern the use of information. The use of information is defined by the user access matrix and distribution lists of various reports and outputs made by the system. This access matrix has to be defined by the Business and internal control. How can a CIO decide on which groups and which functions can use that information?. Secondly, not all information is in the systems, and lot of it is manual.
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From my point of view, the data governance and quality needs more business ownership at all the levels, as Data Governance goes much beyond the system boundaries. Much of the data issues are either due to faulty data entered in the systems or a lack of robust business specifications for IT systems. Isn’t the prediction seem to be recommeding the move in the other direction?
Looking forward to your comments. This post should be taken as invoking comments from readers, and inviting discussion. I will add more to this post. You may also refer my portal Business Intelligence and Performance Management Institute. Our main theme has been that data quality and data governance is much more a business issue than an IT issue.
