What’s driving the increasing need for data governance?
As I meet with data professionals across industries, it is abundantly clear that data governance is more important than ever. Executives are expecting more from data, but without the proper investment, it is harder than ever to respond at the speed of business.
So why is it increasingly difficult to respond to our executives at the pace of the business? There are a number of key factors, including the continuous rise in the following:
- Data volume: We have more data today than yesterday (everyday!). In fact, the amount of data doubles every two years. Yet, we cannot expect to double our efforts or double our staffing or technology spend.
- Regulation: The regulatory landscape is evolving, increasing expectations for how data is handled. In the United States, at the time of this writing, six states had signed privacy and data protection legislation into law. This increases the complexity of compliance for data handling.
- Expectations: Executives’ expectations are rising, but our use of data is not. In a recent Tableau survey, >80% of CEOs wanted their organizations to be data driven, but less than 35% percent of employees felt their data was used in decision making.
- User base: More individuals than ever are engaging in data, wanting it for their own use but needing to trust it. It puts our governance professionals in a position to add tremendous value by providing trusted, well-governed data to our organizations.
We have to become more innovative and more embedded, leveraging more technologies (e.g., automation and AI) than ever before. We talk about what that means for our customers. But what does it mean for us? If it’s difficult to answer key, basic business questions today, how do we expect to do it in two–three years with more data than ever? We must take this sense of urgency and build capabilities that will scale and last as our volume, complexity, expectations, and user base continue to grow at an unprecedented rate.
