Informatica Data Quality

Just gave a presentation at MIT's Information Quality conference hosted at the Sloan school of management. Data Governance largely deals with softer topics like people, organizational strategies, and processes.  Not necessarily technology.  The irony was not lost on anyone that this presentation given at MIT stressed that technology alone would not solve a company's data quality problems.

It was a real privilege and honor for me to return as a lecturer to some of the same classrooms I attended as a student. MIT's Sloan school is right next to the Media Lab where I did undergraduate research some twenty years ago.  The most profound takeaway from my time as an engineering student was the notion that technology alone could not solve hard problems.  Back in 1986, we were experimenting with sending images and video over the network and the prof's were always stressing that social and organizational considerations factored heavily into technology adoption.  This may sound obvious to grizzled IT veterans, but to the wide-eyed geeks studying at MIT, this came as quite a revelation.  Certainly, this is the underlying driver behind Data Governance - it's a necessary framework so the enterprise can leverage and apply data quality, data integration, and metadata management technology.

The presentation covered several case studies involving successful customer deployments of enterprise-wide data governance programs.  Many of the attendees commented that they found it necessary to gain initial wins on tactical projects so they could gain credibility and navigate the political issues behind an enterprise deployment. There was certainly some really vigorous discussion and debate on this topic.

What experience have you had with implementing a data governance program?  Just like these MIT students, feel free to share your opinions with us.