 Hello, and welcome. My name is Shannon Kemp, and I'm the Executive Editor of DataVersity. We would like to thank you for joining the current installment of the Monthly DataVersity Webinar Series, Real World Data Governance with Bob Siner. Today, Bob will be discussing everybody as a data steward. Just a couple of points to get us started. Due to the large number of people that attend these sessions, you will be muted during the webinar. For questions, we'll be collecting them via the Q&A in the bottom right hand corner of your screen. Or if you'd like to tweet, we encourage you to share highlights or questions by Twitter using hashtag RWDG, Real World Data Governance. Now let me introduce to you our speaker for today, Bob Siner. Bob is the President and Principal of KIK Consulting and Educational Services and the publisher of the data administration newsletter, TDAN.com. Bob has been a recipient of the Damon Professional Award for significant and demonstrable contributions to the data management industry. Bob specializes in non-invasive data governance, data stewardship, and metadata management solutions. And with that, I will get the floor to Bob to get started with today's webinar. Hello and welcome. Thank you very much, Shannon. Thank you, everybody. I'm extremely happy to have you with me today for this month's installment of Real World Data Governance. This is one of my favorite subjects, and this is a very popular subject around data governance that a lot of people have a lot of interest in. And what's interesting about this particular webinar is that I'm going to present an approach to you about data governance and data stewardship that might be a little bit off the beaten path. There's a lot of organizations that have handfuls of data stewards that are assigned into the roles of data stewards. They may call them data stewards. This is a different approach to stewardship in regards to data governance, where I feel that everybody is a data steward. And if everybody is a data steward, then we certainly need to learn how to deal with it. So that is the topic for today's webinar. So I hope you enjoyed. Please pose questions. Looking forward to conversing with you and answering questions that you have. Before we get started, I wanted to share with you the recently announced list of the upcoming webinars for the balance of the year. In July, we'll be talking about big data and BI analytics and how they require governance. In August, we'll be talking about data governance and steward certification. And you can see the rest of the subjects trying to keep the subjects relevant and meaningful for you. Please make suggestions as to topics and things that you'd like to see addressed in the Real World Data Governance webinar series. These webinars take place on the 3rd, Thursday of the month at 2 p.m. and you can register on line at dataversity or at kikconsolving.com. Real quickly, before we get started, I just wanted to bring a couple of things to your attention. One is the book that you may be familiar with or you may not. It's called Non-Invasive Data Governance. It's my first book. It was published back in September, and it's available through Techniques Publications or through Amazon.com. Also, kikconsolving.com, which I consider the home of non-invasive data governance. And I wanted to share with you also a dataversity event that I will be speaking at. I don't want to miss the date there. It's actually in September of this year in Jersey City or real close to New York City. It's the Data Governance Financial Services Conference. It's held by Dataversity with DevTech International. And the presentation that I will be giving at this event is called Considerations for Starting or Enhancing a Financial Data Governance Program. So I hope to see you there. And again, like I said before, I'm really happy to have you on the line today for this webinar. The truth is that leadership in our organizations, they're beginning to recognize that data governance and data stewardship goes way beyond just the handful of people that we traditionally might recognize as being data stewards. They're getting to the point where they're thinking that everybody in the organization needs to be held accountable for what they do with data, and that is the definition of data, the production of data, and the usage of data. And so people that define data have to be as responsible for how they define the data. People that produce data should understand the impact that they have on the rest of the organization when they're producing data. And certainly it goes without saying that people that use data must be held accountable for following all of the rules that are being thrown at them, whether they're internal rules and business rules or their external rules and compliance and security and privacy rules. Basically, everybody in the organization or most people in the organization have a relationship to the data, and that is why I say that everybody in the organization is a data steward, and we need to learn to deal with that. So the future of stewardship will not only engage those few selected subject matter experts or stewards that we have in our organization. They'll be open to engage everybody in the organization. Everybody needs to understand that they need to protect the data. That's first and foremost, it seems, in a lot of organizations. And this open view of stewardship may extend the program that you presently have in place, and you may need to address this in the future with your data governance program. So let's spend the next hour talking about those things. We're going to talk about how to expand your program, to include that role for everybody, how to define stewardship, how to communicate to people in the organization, this difference in philosophy and the fact that everybody is a data steward, how to embrace those perspectives, and then how to even deal with the idea that everybody in the organization is a steward of data in some way, shape, or form. Real quickly, I want to go through some definitions, and I threw them all on this one page here. I just don't want to focus on these too much, but I want to spend some time talking about how I define data governance and data stewardship, data governance is the execution and enforcement of authority over the management of data, and there's a lot of definitions of data governance out there. I specifically selected this definition because I think it has teeth to it. People look at it and say, well, that's worded kind of strongly. Can we tame that a little bit? I say, well, really, at the end of the day, what are we trying to achieve by putting a data governance program in place? We're trying to achieve that execution and enforcement of authority for everybody that has a relationship to data. So data stewardship is, again, the formalization of accountability for the management of data, and that is let's identify what people's relationships to the data are, and let's help them to steward that data as a valuable enterprise asset in whatever way that we can. Real quickly, I give you a definition of non-invasive data governance, and again, the idea of everybody as a data steward is really very much in line with the concepts of non-invasive data governance, where we're going to apply formal accountability and behavior through a framework of roles and responsibilities, and we're going to apply governance to processes rather than calling all of our processes data governance processes. The goal of being non-invasive is that we want to be transparent, supportive, and collaborative in how we put governance in place in our organization. So that definition that I use for data stewardship says it's the formalization of accountability, and if you agree with that definition, then the fact that we say formalization of accountability implies that there's already some level of accountability for data in the organization, whether that's for defining data properly, producing data properly, or using data in the ways that it's intended to be used. So we need to look for that existing level of accountability in a little while here, and on one of the slides I'll be talking about how some organizations say there's no accountability for data. Well, the fact is that if you have a data governance, if you have a data warehouse, or you're doing master data management, or you're doing ERP, and you're trying to create these systems that will be the single source of truth or the reference point for data in your organization, there is already some level of accountability if you have been even somewhat successful in the implementation of BI or MDM or ERP solutions. Somebody in the organization at some point in time has responsibility for the definition, production, and usage of data in those applications. And one of the things that I suggest is that we identify who those people are, and we recognize that they have some responsibility around the management of data. Do we need to go out and tag each and every one of them and tell them that they're a data steward and that their responsibilities have changed? I would say not. I would say let them understand that they are stewards based on the mere fact that they are working with data day in, day out in the organization. And you'll notice that later in this webinar I'll talk about how important it is to get our management to understand, and they will concur that everybody in the organization that uses data needs to protect that data. That's pretty easy to say. People that are defining and producing data, they need to understand too the impact they have on data in the organization. So to say that there's no accountability is more of a stretch than to say that there's already some level of accountability for data in the organization. What we need to do is we need to identify that. We need to recognize that. We need to record that and use that information to help us to coordinate and cooperate around the management of data in our organization. So there's 10 things that I want you to consider regarding the fact that everybody in the organization is a data steward. Now one of the things that we can do right out of the gate when we're putting together a governance program or if we have an existing governance program is per source of data in the organization identify who the accountable people are for that source of data. Who defined that data? Where's that data coming from and who has responsibility for producing that data? Who's using that data? Now we can do that per source of data. We can do that per subject area of data. And we can do that per system of data or package of data that we have in our organization. So three of the things that we need to consider if we believe that there's a fact that everybody in the organization is a data steward one of the first things that we need to do is go out and inventory who those people are. And again we don't need to go out to them and tag them and tell them they're data stewards and get them to think that their jobs are going to change significantly. There are different types of stewards in the organization which I'm going to address here in this webinar as well. So we need to inventory who does what with data across the organization as a starting point to consider the fact that everybody is a data steward of data in the organization. Data governance should really help these people that we've identified as being accountable it should help them to be accountable it should help them to be held accountable for those things that they're doing with data in the organization and accountable for what? We're talking about accountable for making certain that we're not defining the same data for the umpteenth time in our organization. We need to put processes in place when we're defining new databases for people to go out and look to see if the data that they need already exists somewhere or can be used from somewhere else before we go out and create another version of the same data. People that are producing the data even the people that are on the front line in the stores or in the hotels or anywhere where data is being entered into the systems needs to understand that the way that they enter data is going to have some impact on the organization and the way people use data we need to make sure that from a data protection perspective from a security perspective that the people that use the data understand those rules associated with how to use data in their organization. Five more things to think about in regards to the fact that everybody is a data steward. Well, what value we need to be able to articulate to our organization the value of improving the enterprise view of data? I hear from organization to organization the fact that we can't break down the silos between different parts of the organization what value is the organization going to drive from creating that enterprise view of data and sharing data across the organization? If your organization says that nobody is accountable well the question is, is that what management thinks? I mean the fact is that everybody who uses data knows that they need to protect it so they're right off the bat we know that everybody is accountable for how they protect the data and that nobody is accountable for making decisions than how are decisions being made associated with the data or even our decisions being made so these people who in their daily jobs are defining, producing and using data we've got to consider the fact that they are stewards of the data now there may be other levels of stewards which I'm going to talk about here in a couple of minutes people that have responsibility for subject matters of data as they cross the organization they may be at a different level or typically they are at a different level of responsibility around the data we can call them data stewards or we can call them data subject matter experts or data domain stewards or whatever we want to call them but we need to recognize also that there's a difference between people that day to day are defining, producing and using data and those people that have the responsibility for making decisions associated with that data so pretty much anybody who touches the data is a data steward of data in your organization we look at the industry there should be an industry standard for how we define data steward I hear that from a lot of people and the fact is that I don't necessarily agree with that I think that the way that you define stewards in your organization really depends on the way that your organization is going to handle governance to begin with and formalizing accountability certainly becomes very important to how we define what a data steward is to our organization I've been in very large organizations and sat in a room with six people and I've been told these are the data stewards of the data in the organization and the first thing that I like to do with those types of organizations is explain to them that now we really need to be looking at it beyond that those people may play a particular role for the data in the organization but they're not the only data stewards that we have so if we're going to come up with a standard definition who's going to come up with that definition actually I think that the better idea is that the definition of the data steward is really specific to the organization rather than there being an industry standard for a definition of what a data steward is so these two subjects here on this slide kind of go hand in hand the question is who is a data steward and everybody is a data steward basically a data steward can be anybody in the organization whether it's in the business or the technical areas of the organization that define produce or use data as part of their job and that's pretty much everybody and the end of that line is that if they are held formally accountable for what they do with the data so as I get to later in the webinar here we're going to talk about how important it is to get the management of our organization or the senior leadership to concur that people that have relationships to the data need to be held accountable so everybody is a data steward so a steward is a person that defines producers or uses data and has a defined level of accountability so those two statements basically say the same thing but if you agree with me I'd love to hear from you if you disagree with me I'd love to hear from you as well it's just a fact that at some point at some level we're going to recognize that everybody in the organization has some level of accountability for the data so who do the data stewards report to well the fact is if a data steward can be anybody in the organization data stewards report to who they report to so we don't need to change who they report to we don't need necessarily in our organization to have all of our data stewards reporting through the same part of the organization you know this senior management must support sponsor understand what we're doing with the stewards how we're utilizing the stewards when they're going to get engaged and when they're not going to get engaged but we don't need to change the organizational structure to account for how we have stewards in our organization what qualifications or skills are needed by the person that is a steward of data well the stewards qualify for their position based on their skills so analysts are supposed to be good at analyzing and definers are supposed to be good at defining and modelers are supposed to be good at modeling the data stewards qualify for their position based on their skills stewards do not qualify for their positions based on necessarily specifically their data skills but as they access the data they need to know that accountability is there and we need to teach that to new employees to existing employees we really need to break that out into the organization but I oftentimes get to ask the question what's the salary raised for data stewards well data stewards make what they make it's in line with a report to who they report to stewards do not get paid extra for stewarding data certainly there have been organizations that have put steward responsibilities into their evaluations of employees that's one way to go about it but we don't need to provide bonuses to people or pay them extra depending on how they steward the data again everybody in the organization is a data steward and we need to learn how to deal with that they need to be held formally accountable for following the rules whether they're definition rules production rules or usage rules and I give some examples of things under each of those three different types of rules definition rules oftentimes I've seen organizations that in the past just allowed people to go directly to the database administrators or to the data modelers and add different pieces of data well if we put a process in place for formally collecting information as we're defining new data for the organization then we need to make certain that people follow those rules associated with the definition of data organizations do logical and physical modeling they recognize that the system or record is and they build these business glossaries somebody needs to be accountable for making certain that we have valid definitions for the most used and the most critical data in our organization some people will tell you we really need to have sound business definitions for every piece of data in the organization for producing the data now whether that's data that we're receiving from the outside and we're manipulating into data that we use within our organization or it's data that's created and produced through ETL and movement people need to be held accountable for defining how that's going to be done and then sticking to the standards that we define so often within our organization again usage of data everybody who uses the data needs to follow the business rules the classification and protection the compliance rules so I've said this a couple different ways in the last several slides the fact is that people who have a relationship to the data need to be held formally accountable for that relationship to the data and if we do that we can be very successful in how we put our governance programs into place and it's very non-invasive to identify and recognize stewards rather than assigning people to be stewards assign people different responsibilities the first thing that they're going to think about is this is over and above their existing work that they already have and they're going to push back so if we recognize people and that's something that one of my clients years ago had shared with me we say that we're recognizing people for their relationship to the data that has a positive connotation rather than being assigned something which oftentimes has a negative connotation that comes along with it so think about identifying and recognizing stewards rather than assigning people to be data stewards in your organization I wrote an article several years ago about my rules for becoming a data steward and I think it's appropriate to share those in this webinar and again just to go through them real quickly with you a data steward can be absolutely anybody and that lines up perfectly with the fact that everybody is a data steward in the organization being a steward describes a relationship to the data and it's not necessarily a position I've seen organizations where they've had FTEs or full-time equivalents of people with the title of data steward it's not always necessary to do that especially if you're thinking of the fact that everybody in the organization is a data steward we don't need to call them all data stewards they've already got titles they've already got responsibilities let's identify who they are and what they're doing with the data a data steward is not hired to be a steward a steward does not have to have the title of data steward they don't have to be told how to do their job unless it's in regards to how they're managing data as an asset of the organization one of the things that I can push back on quite a bit is that I say that public or industry data steward certification is a load of bunk it's true if we consider the fact that our organization should define how data stewards are recognized based on the culture of our organization so when I say that a data steward does not have to be taught how to do their job I guess there's industry education about what a data steward does and typically how they get involved but oftentimes that's very specific to your organization we also need to recognize that there's more than one data steward for each type of data like I shared with you a moment ago there are people, there are organizations that will say these five people over here there are data stewards the first thing that I want to do with them is explain to them no no no no everybody is a data steward and we need to learn to integrate that into our program so steward training in an organization should focus on formalizing that accountability when I first wrote this article years ago about these rules for becoming a data steward I thought and in fact the intention was for it to be a little bit controversial in the fact that we can't have everybody in the organization be a data steward in fact I did not receive one negative email in regards to that article everybody said you know what that's a concept that's not being embraced within our organization and everybody was very positive about it so there goes for trying to be controversial I really wasn't successful in doing that for this subject at least for organizations a lot of people thought that this is the way that it needs to be so those eight rules that I just shared for becoming a data steward you may not agree with all of them you may not agree with any of them or I'm sorry you may agree with all of them or you may not agree with any of them the fact is some people will look at this and think if we're going to be noninvasive in our approach to governance it's a do nobody approach and say no that's not really the case the fact is it's a do everybody approach it's get everybody in the organization to understand that they need to be held accountable for how they govern data across the organization so I mentioned before that there's different types of stewards within the organization there's operational data stewards and there's tactical data stewards the operational data stewards the people that are the data definers the data producers the data users those are the everybody those are they could be people within the organization that have specific responsibilities around data within their operational unit but they're not necessarily decision makers for that data on a standardized basis across the organization that responsibility typically falls into the hands of the tactical data stewards and I've called them data domain stewards I've called them enterprise data stewards one of my clients said to me aren't these really the subject matter experts of data in our organization I said yes to some degree it is it's potentially the people that are going to make decisions about the data across the organization rather than just specifically within their business area and I said well they're basically the subject matter experts in your organization and they said okay well we're going to be really noninvasive in our approach and we're just going to call them the data subject matter experts and I'm going to share with you a model on the next page and I've shared this model before now we need to understand that if we're going to break down the silos of data in our organization that we need to identify the people in the organization that are going to enable us to do that and oftentimes it is this tactical level data steward and these tactical level data stewards is not everybody it's going to be those people in the organization that either are the facilitators that are solving problems around their subject area or domain of data or if they're not then we need to have the ability to escalate it even further up the levels of the organization we need to be able to escalate it up to the data governance council or the body in your organization that carries the responsibilities of what traditionally would be called a data governance council this slide right here is one that I've shared before it's an operating model of rules and responsibilities and the rules around governance in the organization and the first response that I get from a lot of people is that this is very bureaucratic there's too many levels can we get rid of some of the levels the fact is that in most organizations they're set up this way they have an operational level they have a tactical level strategic and executive in this diagram years ago I added to the diagram on the outside on the perimeters of the diagram whether or not these things already exist in the organization our senior leadership team for our executive level that already exists these operational people they already exist we need to identify who the tactical level stewards are and the strategic level people at the council level for making decisions associated with data so within that red block on the screen here is the area that we're typically talking about at the operational level pretty much everybody is a data steward at the tactical level we need to identify the subject matter experts that are going to assist us in resolving issues that cross different parts of the organization so this operating model becomes a very important item when we're building our governance program and one of the suggestions that I have about this model is that rather than trying to plug your organization into the model take it and overlay it that already exists in your organization that's a lot less invasive let's identify and recognize who these people are again rather than assigning them into this data governance construct of roles and responsibilities within our organization I'm not going to talk in a whole lot of detail about this diagram but I do want to point a couple things out those two areas on the right hand side there's an escalation path and a communication path an escalation typically goes from the operational level up to the strategic level very seldom do we take a data issue up to the executive part of the organization on the left hand side of the diagram we've got our data governance partners and our data governance team so the team is the people that have responsibility for implementing governance within the organization the partners can be project management, IT can be audit can be risk management it can be regulatory and compliance it can be a lot of different parts of our organization we're not going to tell them how to govern data but they certainly are the partners of those individuals that have the responsibility for putting the program into place so real quickly I want to spend a few more minutes talking about the different types of stewards that we have in the organization the operational data stewards when they work within a specific business or technical unit and they certainly have hands-on knowledge of the data that they use they produce and they use and they're used by their business unit they define they produce and they use data associated with their jobs so the operational data stewards again can be everybody in the organization that has to be held accountable for what they do with data and not everybody is a definer and a producer some people are just users some people are just definers some people are just producers of data and those people need to understand that they have a level of accountability and it's our job as the people that are putting the program in place in the organization to help them to understand that we're really not trying to be a roadblock in the way of success in the organization but they do have a level of accountability and if we can get our management to back that and say if you've got a relationship to data we're going to hold you accountable for that relationship that goes a great way towards being successful especially in a non-invasive approach to data governance okay so let's talk about the data domain stewards at the tactical level they also work in a business unit, a technical unit they may have also hands on a specific domain of data or a subject area of data in the organization they could be the facilitators of resolution of issues pertaining to that domain of data and in some organizations they do have decision making authority so that arrow along the right hand side of the pyramid diagram that I just shared with you it may stop at the tactical level if the tactical data stewards have that decision making authority if not we can't just agree to disagree and go our merry way we need to have the ability to be able to escalate issues or escalate concerns so the people in the organization that are at the strategic level and again that's typically the data governance council the data steward coordinators I haven't really talked about them yet but I'm going to share a diagram that I have shared a lot in the past called a common data matrix data steward coordinators sit within a business unit and they know who the domain stewards are they know who the operational stewards are they help us to communicate with the different stewards within our different parts of the organization some organizations have these roles of data steward coordinators sometimes they don't call them that but they have sometimes it's handled by different people in the organization if out of all those roles that I shared with you on the operating model roles and responsibilities if you're looking to eliminate a role one of those that you may consider would be the data steward coordinator but I think you also see that having somebody who knows who the stewards are who act as the point person between the domain stewards subject matter experts and the operational data stewards becomes a critical component to a successful governance program here is a diagram that I share off in the common data matrix and let me just real quickly explain it to you down the left hand side of the diagram we have the different subject areas or domains of data and some of those subject areas or domains might be separated into subdomains or even sub-subdomains or even down to the specific data element level across the top of the two-dimensional spreadsheet or two-dimensional matrix we have the different parts of the organization we have IT we have corporate units and business units we've got the different parts of the organization and one thing that we need to do is for each of the different subject areas of data is identify who in the organization are those accountable people the people that are looking at the data across the organization rather than just specifically within their part of the business unit and if you notice in the upper left hand side of this diagram I have the different roles and responsibilities that I shared on the pyramid diagram and I try to color coordinate between the two as closely as I can but those in yellow those data domain stewards are on the left hand side of the diagram they may reside in a business unit but when they're playing that role of the domain steward for the organization or the enterprise data steward for that data they need to be looking at their part of the organization almost in a secondary fashion but they can't be their primary focus they need to be looking at organization first and that's why the domain stewards are kind of separated from the rest of the organization on this common data matrix the next set of columns is IT well for each of the different subject areas of data for each of the sub-subject areas if we can identify what data sources or data systems that data resides in I'm going to kind of highlight this here if I can to draw on the screen so these systems that we have here we're identifying what data resides in what systems and we need to understand that there's data subject matter experts and system subject matter experts for that data in IT are they data stewards? that really depends on your organization I typically suggest that the data stewards or everybody that resides in the pyramid part the triangle part of that previous diagram they fall on a business unit the information technology their partners of data governance but if we don't take advantage of the knowledge of the data SMEs and the system SMEs in our organization I think we're making a big mistake so if you look over as we work across the diagram we've got our corporate units and our business units and this diagram can be very wide it'll be less long or deep than it is wide because there's only certain number of subject areas of data that we embrace within our organization it's not an infinite list but across the organization there may be different parts of the organization that we know we have people that are stewards of the data we need to identify who they are just one more thing to mention about this diagram here is that there's also a grade column associated with business units and corporate units sometimes in your organization you'll have shadow IT within those different parts of the organization we need to recognize that as well who in the shadow IT for the different parts of the organization know the data we need to record that somewhere and the common data matrix is a good place to start to recognize that everybody is a data steward we need to make certain that everybody or every part of the organization that we record in this model that we hold them formally accountable for their relationship to the data and so I just superimpose the pyramid diagram on top of the common data matrix the idea here is that we use the same colors again so we can have people see where they reside within the operating model but also see where they reside within the general context of data in the organization and that is what the common data matrix does for us to inventory who does what with data across the organization so what are the responsibilities of everybody so if everybody is a definer or a producer or a user of data well the definers need to be held accountable as we mentioned before for doing their part for the organization for defining the way that data is going to be used by their part of the organization and how that data is going to be managed the producers are responsible for producing creating, updating and deleting data the users are responsible for using the data to perform their jobs and their processes the fact is that everybody in the organization is responsible for the integrity of data usage within the organization and I believe that that's not that difficult of a sell for management in the organization they follow the rules they produce the data they are responsible for communicating their concerns regarding the data responsibilities of everybody in the organization who might be considered a data steward they are responsible for doing what is expected of them while being formally held accountable for the data the toughest question to answer regarding this is what does it mean to formally hold people accountable are we going to write it into their job descriptions are we going to be audited to that regard it begs the question what does it mean to be held formally accountable within your organization I'm not going to really dive into that in this session here but I'd love to have that conversation with you if you want to talk about it the responsibilities of the domain stewards are again to manage that domain of data across the organization often times they are identified by their position in the organization sometimes by who is the person in that role right now so when they are acting in the role of the domain steward their affiliation to their business unit almost becomes secondary and not be the authority really depends on their position within the organization but that middle level of the pyramid diagram that tactical level that is the most difficult hurdle for most organizations to get over because most organizations don't necessarily recognize the go-to person for different subject areas of data in the organization domain stewards have additional responsibilities to escalate issues to document the data communicated to people that's where the data steward coordinators come in the responsible for participating in tactical routes to solve problems the data domain stewards play critical role in the implementation of governance across the organization the responsibilities of the coordinators were as I said before to act as a point communication person going from the domain stewards to the operational data stewards but also they can act as the point person in their relationship the other way where the operational data stewards can share with the steward coordinators the issues that they have and maybe the coordinators are that central hub that are responsible for then communicating with the data domain stewards in the organization they identify this data steward coordinators can help us to identify the stewards they work alongside the domain stewards and they typically don't have a whole lot of decision making authority but they're there for that central role in making certain that we're coordinating the data stewards a data steward coordinator what do they do they coordinate the activities of the data stewards and typically I suggest that we stay away from defining things using the words in what we're trying to define but really it's easiest to say that the data stewards coordinate the activities of the stewards so what are some of the ways that we if you subscribe to this idea the organization is a data steward what are some of the steps that we can take for how to deal with this new idea that everybody in the organization has some level of accountability one of the first things that we can do is we can get our leadership to concur that everybody who uses data is accountable for how they use the data and isn't that a given already within your organization it's not as though the feds or whoever it is that is applying these rules and regulations to your type of organization to your industry it's not like they're coming to us and saying follow these rules if you like it's not optional for us the data has to be protected everybody in the organization really needs to be held accountable for how we're protecting the data so I think it's a pretty easy thing to do to get leadership to concur that everybody in the organization that uses data has a level of accountability that's why I used the word that anybody who uses the data is accountable but when we think about it that everybody in the organization that produces data we won't say that they are accountable but they should be accountable for how they produce the data they should be accountable for the quality of the data that they produce for understanding the impact that they have so to be used in the organization one of the larger big box electronic stores used to collect people's zip codes when they were going through the line and purchasing something within the store and one year I saw or one year on the holidays I saw that somebody was not and it was entering the zip code for the store rather than asking me what my zip code was the fact is that they were entering in the zip code of the store and not entering in my zip code so that information if all of the people in the position in that organization were entering in the zip code of the store then the information that's going to go back to the corporate headquarters is going to say that all of their customers are coming from the same zip code as to where the store is located and that's not necessarily true in fact in most cases that's not true so they are accountable for the quality they need to be understanding the data that they're producing they need to understand the impact it's going to have on the organization and they need to have accountability for gathering all the appropriate data so oftentimes if data is missing it's because people you can give them the ability to bypass a field or just select the default option one of the stories that I heard is that more people in the world were born on 010101 than any other day not because there's more people actually born on that day it's because it's a default somewhere when we're entering in somebody's birthday and if they don't understand that that information is going to be used they may just bypass that field they need to make certain they're gathering all the necessary information and they should be held accountable for what they do while they're producing that data if they have a responsibility for defining data they also need to be they should be accountable for the following procedures that are set up in the organization for defining data so instead of creating a rogue database let's help them to understand that this data probably already exists somewhere in the organization we have procedures in place for people to follow to make certain that the data is being defined the way the data needs to be defined so one of the things that these data definers need to do is follow procedure I've found business definitions I've laughed before about something that I call cheeseburger definitions and oftentimes even in large organizations today I find that they define their data with the terms that are used in what we're defining a cheeseburger is a burger with cheese a patient account is an account for a patient we need to make certain that we have found business definitions that are understood at all levels of the organization and we also have to understand that these people that are defining data should be sure that they record the metadata somewhere whether it's in a glossary or it's in a dictionary or whether it's on a piece of paper or a napkin it needs to be recorded somewhere well certainly a napkin is not the best place to keep our business definitions but if that's where we're going to house that information we need to have it somewhere in the organization and who should be responsible for collecting that information they're typically the people that have the responsibility for defining data for the organization whether it's just in an application or it is across the board so another way to deal with it is make certain that everybody follows the bill of rights and this is not a bill of rights as in the rights of the data stewards it's a kind of a play on words where we want people to use the right data at the right time in the right way for the right purpose and most often that's going to help us to lead to a right decision so this is what I call the bill of rights get people to use the data the right way at the right time in the right way and so on and so forth we need to get people isn't that what governance is all about is getting the appropriate people involved in the appropriate time and then again executing and enforcing and one way to do that and one way to apply stewards to activities is to create a diagram something like this it's a racy chart you're probably familiar with racy charts if you're not there's a lot of information out there racy stands for responsible accountable consulted and informed obscene organizations that have added the S for supportive of the work that's done but if we can define the steps of a process and we can define the different roles that make up our data governance program then we should be able to define who's responsible who's accountable who should be informed so I call this a governance activity matrix and Shannon will tell us that everybody who's attending the webinar will get links to all of these templates so if you're interested in these templates they'll certainly be made available to you but I use them a lot and they make a lot of sense and it's a great way of looking at how to deal with the fact that everybody is a data steward we need to engage the operational data stewards we need to engage the data governance council when need be and when do they do that that's all part of governance and the governance processes that we define within our organization another way to deal with the fact that everybody is a data steward in the organization is to get your management to embrace the idea of perspectives when it comes to governing data for our organization I know I find that in a lot of organizations the people that have responsibility for governance are defining are saying that data governance is the best thing since sliced bread and that it's brand new and it's something we've never done before the fact is I suggest that we take an alternate approach to that we tell our management that we're already governing data and we can formalize the accountability for the data we can improve how we manage the risk and how we secure the data we can improve the quality and provide quality assurance we can certainly improve coordination cooperation and communications around the data and one of the ways to do that is to inventory and collect who does well with the data we don't have to spend a lot of money we need structure these are all things that I consider to be strong messages for the management another way that we can deal with everybody is a data steward is we make certain that we communicate this perspective effectively to people in the organization and recognize that we have a different message based on the different audiences that we have and we need to recognize that maybe there's different timing depending on the different communication types and the different types of tools that we use for delivery whether it's through webinars whether it's through conference calls or meetings or whether it's just a status report that's being produced but we need to recognize that we communicate with different levels of roles and responsibilities in different ways in our organization and I'll share with you one more tool and that is the communication plan matrix if we can define the things that need to be communicated we've already defined what the different roles are then defining how we're going to communicate one specific item to one specific group group is we can identify the message that we want them to take away from the communications how we're going to communicate it when we're going to communicate it who's going to communicate it putting our arms around communications and awareness is essential to having a successful governance program within your organization so just quickly to summarize here and then I hope there's some questions that we can address certainly keep your questions coming the main points that we covered are to include the scope of our data governance programs to include everybody in the organization again I'd love to hear from you whether or not you feel the same as I do that everybody in the organization is a data steward if that is the case then we need to expand our program to include those people include everybody to embrace formalized accountability rather than assigning it to people as accountability we need to communicate with people in the organization at the different levels no matter what the size is we need to embrace perspectives associated with people's relationships to the data and these are all different ways to deal with the idea that everybody in your organization potentially can be a steward of the data so before we take questions just to remind you real quickly that on July 16th I think that's the third Thursday of the month at 2 p.m. Eastern the subject of the real world data governance webinar will be big data and BI analytics required data governance I hope you will join us for that as well and with that what I want to do is I want to turn it back over to Shannon and see if we have any questions regarding today's webinar of course we have some great questions and one of the most popular questions that we always get is questions about the slides and the recording and just a reminder that I will be sending a follow-up email with not only the links to the slides and the recording of this session but as Bob pointed out to the matrices as well and that email will go out by end of day Monday so if you don't have that in your inbox by Tuesday let me know and I will be sure and get that information to you so let me just look through we've got quite a few questions coming in so let me start here Bob with I separate them as data owners own and accountable for the data data stewards authorized to analyze and modify the data to manage the data accordingly to the governance framework it's really more of a statement Bob but do you have any comments to that statement? I certainly do the fact is that a lot of organizations call people the owners and even though that I'm not going to tell you that that's not something that you should do in your organization because it may be already ingrained within your organization but ownership really implies the wrong thing it implies that it's my data I can do with it what I want when in fact the organization owns the data so again I'm not going to tell you to change that in your organization but we need to be very clear on what ownership means for data across the organization the term that's being used more often than not in organizations is steward the data we need to identify people in the organization that have that accountability for the data steer away from ownership if you can steer closer to stewardship and I think you'll find that you won't be dealing with something that was mentioned at the DGIQ conference last week by Len Silverstone he talked about data mining I'm not trying to analyze the data but it's data mining because it's my data and if it's my data I can define the data the way I want to no the fact is the data is an organizational asset you're really stewarding the definition of the data and not owning it so yeah I have something to say about that just a few things no that's great so do you also use the term data so if you kind of address this already using the term data owners and do you is there ever a situation where you use it or is it only when it's already ingrained in an organization if I'm involved in the setting up of a program I steer away from it and I don't typically have a title or a role, specifically a role of person who's a data owner the reason why I would continue to use it is only if it's been come that ingrained in the organization that they really want to change my suggestion is if you're going to call them data owners or process owners define exactly what that means for your organization rather than giving people the idea that it's their process or their data and they can do with it what they want because they can't another topic here which technology solutions we know there's many can we use to make data stewards effective modeling solutions well you know what there's a lot of great tools on the market as was represented at the conference at the data diversity conference last week there's a lot of vendors that are playing in this space certainly metadata repository tools are vital also there's a lot of tools that are playing specifically in the data governance space so typically I don't try to push one vendor or one tool above the others and the idea is that there's tools that will help us to control workflow that tools that will help us to engage and get people involved in the different processes associated with defining and producing data to take a look at the tools and the data governance and the metadata space I know that Forrester put out a report in the last year as to who a lot of those tools are and even Gardner has their magic quadrant of tools that play in that space there's a lot of technologies but I'd start with workflow metadata management and then the idea of how do we use that to engage stewards at the appropriate time so there's a lot of technologies out there but the technology is not the solution we really need to govern people's behavior and those are the tools that we need to focus on fantastic and I love all the questions coming in from everybody just a reminder too that if we don't have time to answer your question directly in the webinar today it does write up the answers to those questions and that will also be provided that we didn't get to and that will also be provided in the follow-up email so moving on Bob how do you engage non-technical users in the data governance journey well and so we need to embrace the non-technical users so the question is how do we do that well the first thing that we do is we help them to understand that they truly are non-technical they have a big impact on the data they have an impact on the quality of the data quality of the data definition the quality of the data production as I mentioned before you don't have to be a technical person to have that type of impact so if we can embrace the idea that they have a relationship to the data and help them to understand you know from a non-technical perspective what their impact on the data is and how we can make their life easier rather than building a brick wall around the data in our organization that goes a great way towards helping the non-technical people to understand the role that they play in governance. Thank you and so going back to kind of the top the beginning questions my experience is that if everyone owns the data no one will own it because someone else will do it you want to expand on that at all certainly I'd like to expand on that if they're the owner of the data and they can do with it what they want then it's going to be a problem in the organization at some point in time the data is not going to think up it's going to have different definition it's going to be produced in different ways one of the things that drives executive management crazy is when they ask questions of their business analysts and their technical people in the organization and they get different answers depending on the people that they ask and to get multiple answers to the same question as to what's our most profitable product what are our top 10% most profitable clients what's the lifetime expectancy value of a client they get different answers depending on who they ask that becomes a problem and a lot of that problem stems back to the idea of the ownership of data so what I find is exactly what was asked in that question is that either people want to be the owner of the data or they're dead set against being the owner of the data they want to be the owner if they want control over that data they don't want to be held because they don't want to be held formally accountable for how they define produce and use data so again try to steer away from using the term owner organization and that will help take you a long way towards a successful governance program sure that makes a lot of sense public care our organization likes industry standards in the case of data the DMBAC plays an important role which is fantastic the DMBAC if you don't know stands for the data management body of knowledge and are you aware of non-invasive data governance concepts being incorporated with the DMBAC coming out you know what I'm not aware of it because I haven't been asked to participate in the definition of the new DMBAC and I'm okay with that I think that we need to embrace governance and stewardship of data from different perspectives and if you don't agree with what I say that everybody is a data steward in the organization that's fine I'm not telling you that you should agree with the approach that I take but one of the things that we can do is we can improve people's perspective we can broaden their knowledge of the different approaches that can be used for identifying stewards and engaging stewards and that will help us a lot in our success of the programs Bob thank you so much for another great presentation today I'm afraid that's all we have time for as I mentioned you know keep your questions coming in and Bob will write up the answers to the questions that goes out in the follow-up email that will go out by end of day Monday again that will also contain links to the slides, links to the recording links to the matrices and anything else requested throughout the webinar so Bob again thank you so much and thanks so much to our attendees for being so engaged in everything we do and asking such great questions we absolutely love it and I hope everyone has a great day thank you very much and thank you everybody for spending the hour so I look forward to seeing you again