Datascape podcast episode 7 – discussing data governance with Dennis Walker

Posted in: Technical Track
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Today on the podcast we are going to talk about data governance. Data governance has been around a long time, but it is not a sexy topic with a jazzy solution that is going to make you famous at meetups. It can be hard to implement, and sometimes these projects can fail.

It’s better to think about data governance as an integral part of the plumbing of your data landscape. We need to ensure that the data is documented, quality controlled, secured, and accessible, which is critical for effective and innovative decision making.

Bad data can lead to poor business decisions with all sorts of negative outcomes, ranging in size from small to big. Just think, what if your company decides to make large investments in products destined to fail because they are poorly designed or targeted at the wrong audience? What if you are wrong about your profits and expenses? What if you hire the wrong people and put them in the wrong places? What happens if you ship 1000% too many products to a location they won’t sell; say, snowblowers and lawnmowers to Arizona? What happens when the data isn’t properly secured and ends up in the wrong hands?

These are just a few examples of possible catastrophes related to bad data causing bad decisions. Ensuring that we have a solid data governance program will help us avoid these and other problems.

Dennis Walker is the Senior Director of Solutions Architecture at Pythian, and he joins us on the show today to help us understand data governance a little bit better.

Key Points From This Episode

  • Understand the definition of data governance and its core components.
  • Find out who initiates the data governance programs and their purpose in businesses.
  • The challenges and problems that businesses look to solve with data governance.
  • How an inventory of risks and rewards across an organization organically incentivizes collaborations for data release.
  • The relation between data governance and data enablement to empower business unit leaders to thrive.
  • Learn what is next for data governance and the need for a platform for managing data.
  • Why customer data is generally classified as the riskiest data to have.
  • The tell-tale signs for determining the data governance within your organization.
  • Understand the four levels on assessing the quality of a data governance program.
  • Find out how data governance has changed over the past few years.
  • Hear examples of how to effectively implement data governance programs.

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

The Data Asset by Tony Fisher
Data Strategy by Sid Adelman
The Art of Business Value by Mark Schwartz
Noninvasive Data Governance by Robert S. Seiner — https://www.amazon.com/Non-Invasive-Data-Governance-Robert-Seiner/dp/1935504851
Brief by Joseph McCormack
Connect with Dennis
Contact Dennis

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About the Author

Chris Presley loves order—making him a premier Microsoft SQL Server expert. Not only has he programmed and administered SQL Server, but he has also shared his expertise and passion with budding DBAs as SQL Server instructor at Conestoga College in Kitchener, Ontario. Drawing on his strong disaster-recovery skills, he monitors production environments to swiftly detect and resolve problems before they arise. A self-described adrenaline junkie, Chris likes tackling the biggest database problems and putting out the toughest fires—and hitting the road on his motorcycle.

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