Governance is Not a Defensive Play
My Impressions and Perspectives on the Gartner® Data & Analytics Summit 2022
Contents of the blog series:
- Two Years from Now (Part 1)
- The Rise of Metadata
- Governance is Not a Defensive Play
- Rolling the Sleeves on Metadata/Governance initiatives
In Part 2 of the blog, I covered Active Metadata, its crucial position on the intersection of business and data. In part 3 I will address the growing role of Data Governance in the Modern Data Stack.
Governance is Not a Defensive Play
To me, Data Governance was the second most frequent topic discussed in the summit after Metadata.
According to the keynote I opened this blog with (Gartner Opening Keynote: “Unleash Innovation, Transform Uncertainty”), Governance changes the data from a liability to an asset [1]:
This is how I think, after hearing the speakers, Governance actually enables innovation: we can be more creative with governance – how far can we push boundaries? Governance is the way to ensure innovation is available.
My own takeaways from the keynote:
- Perpetual uncertainty makes us more creative.
- Be a data concierge instead of a data plumber.
- Freedom without governance is anarchy.
- Governance is not about control – when it is, it becomes a self-reinforced failure.
- Governance IS about control ONLY IF you play defensively.
So, what is the definition of Governance?
In his session “Connected Governance Needs a Data and Analytics Governance Platform” [2] Saul Judah defined Connected Governance through outcomes, that it means “to achieve cross-enterprise business outcomes.”.
To me it is not surprising that the success of the D&A Governance Platform is rooted in Policies, Technical capabilities, and orchestration of the technical capabilities:
Mr. Judah elaborated that each use case, like M&A, will require a different setup of the pillars, like Enablers, Technical Capabilities, BoD mandate, Scope of the Business Question, and the Shape to The Governance Response.
In my opinion, Governance is here to stay and evolve, along with the Data Stewardship and Governance leadership positions, a topic which I am going to cover in a different series of blogs.
[1] Gartner, “Gartner Opening Keynote: Unleash Innovation, Transform Uncertainty”, Gartner Data & Analytics Summit, Orlando, Florida, 22-24 August, 2022.
[2] Gartner, “Connected Governance Needs a Data and Analytics Governance Platform”, Gartner Data & Analytics Summit, Orlando, Florida, 22-24 August, 2022.
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