Elevating Data Governance to Leverage Singapore's Smart Nation Agenda
- By JJ Tan, Talend
- December 20, 2022
With Singapore projected to consolidate its position as a regional data hub, businesses must be on the front foot ahead of the expected growth in data volume, velocity and variety. While data governance has become a battleground within organizations globally, the matter could be especially key in the face of the country's Smart Nation agenda and its recent lifting of the moratorium on new data centers.
This proverbial clash over data governance between business-side users — who need speed and access — in opposition to the IT leaders who prioritize stability, security, and control can result in what is being termed a "data paradox". In the Asia Pacific, this is already resulting in silos, manual processes, data privacy, and security shortcomings that overwhelm businesses. And if this is not addressed with urgency, Singapore's enterprises will lack the digital readiness crucial to their global competitiveness.
Finding a fruitful resolution to this conflict is among the essential priorities for businesses. A new category of data leaders is rising in response to this conflict. These innovators balance these trade-offs of speed and security so the business can use data for better insights, responsive strategic recommendations, and confident decisions without exposing the company to unnecessary risk. That person is the Chief Data Officer (CDO) — and businesses that do not already have one will want to catch up soon.
CDOs as the backbone of successful data strategies
The Chief Data Officer — or equivalent titles like Chief Compliance Officer or VP of Data and Analytics — stands at the center of modern business. They do not just lead in technical terms but are a vital part of the business's daily operations.
The CDO is a vital decision-maker at the heart of any successful organization-wide data health strategy. So, they need to establish an agile data environment where everyone achieves the data literacy needed to share a data culture, and everyone can participate in building data trust.
Theirs is a role that is responsible for ensuring data is accessible, healthy and usable by any business user — whether an IT professional, a sales representative or an HR associate. Yet, worryingly, businesses in the Asia Pacific are five times more likely to be bereft of a CDO than their peers in North America. This issue is even starker in the public sector, where nearly 50% of regional CDOs report having to grapple with vague roles and responsibilities.
Against a backdrop of data proliferation and data-based technologies evolving at pace, Singaporean companies must "talk the talk" on data governance. A CDO whose focus encompasses more than just the mechanics of moving or connecting data is crucial. Organizations must first fill the role of a CDO and then ensure they are equipped to identify and solve the root problems affecting their data.
This has a significant payoff to the business, as the best CDOs can prioritize and identify the highest-impact areas to dedicate limited resources. They can also articulate where and how their business will improve by providing healthier, higher quality, more accessible and more compliant data. When data across the organization is healthy, it’s easy to drive business objectives with data.
However, that is just the first step. It has been acknowledged that healthy data use and compliance are business-side problems. However, data leaders themselves still think of their value too much regarding technical responsibilities. A CDO — or any data leader — will become successful in the future by partnering closely with business teams and using their unique position to champion healthy data use throughout the organization.
That process starts with securely democratizing data use across an enterprise with scalable control and compliance.
Democratizing data
The use of low-code/no-code technology and self-service solutions has grown significantly over the past two years, giving non-technical users direct access to data — and greatly expanding the role of the CDO across the business. The democratization of data use empowers everyone around the business with the tools they need to find key data and apply it to their programs, initiatives, and campaigns. And the more experience citizen data scientists obtain from working with data, the more literate they will become on key data issues.
However, this trend has exacerbated the level of digital risk enterprises face, potentially exposing the enterprise to fragmentation, breaches, and compliance failures. The CDO, armed with technical expertise plus context from the lines of business, can mitigate the worst risk while ensuring that every department’s most pressing needs are still met. This includes establishing rules and protocols for data governance across the company.
But there are some critical areas to get right, and data culture is one of those things. The data culture of the organization defines the organization's common language for data, ensures a common understanding of data (data literacy) across the organization, and implements processes and rules that both democratize data and balance data access in a way that is compliant with both internal policies and external regulations.
Balance is the key here, and that balance can only happen when the team responsible for managing risk and the team responsible for managing results share a common understanding of enterprise data. Once those pieces are in place, then everything else is possible.
To ensure that the CDO has the proper organizational support, CDOs must build a team that does not just think about the data but also has three major traits: the ability to collaborate, a keen understanding of strategy and a willingness to learn. Because moving towards a culture of data health and innovation is a long-term journey for organizations, talent from any field related to data needs to be committed to that journey.
Finding a common language
Making decisions off data is hard because of data quality, data access, and data literacy issues — but the truth is, those that work in line-of-business functions do not wake up every day thinking about governance. They care about fast insights. They want to get the right data embedded within the applications or the processes where it is needed most. And it had better be embedded quickly and accurately. Meanwhile, technical data teams are trying to build solutions, often with limited resources and context, that will not break or expose any sensitive or proprietary data.
These two groups can sound like they are speaking two different languages, using the same terms to refer to different things or different terms to refer to the same things. A similar drama plays out across the company, with each department using different terminology and a different framework, and coming to different conclusions using, ostensibly, the same data. In the end, deep domain experts, regardless of their area of expertise, need more than the right dashboard — they need a common language for data use and health.
When there are different pockets of reports, things become challenging. But it is not just about having the right dashboard. In the end, it comes down to having a common language, and that is where a CDO plays a pivotal role.
Data should be our common language. But if it is not defined in a common way, then naturally, different teams will speak over each other. To be successful, everybody needs to understand the performance trends that most affect their responsibilities and be able to communicate them with others. A transparent operating model and structured rhythm of communication are the essential building blocks; dashboards are just tools to make that possible. But to be successful, companies need a common operational model, a structured rhythm of communication, and a unified culture of data health.
Uniting people around data culture
The CDO will not usually have the budget, the people, or the clout to make these changes single-handedly. However, every company needs a culture of valuing data, and the CDO can lay the groundwork for that culture.
We are at the dawn of the growth of the role of CDOs, and it is pivotal that organizations do not give in to impatience and leapfrog critical early steps. This is particularly the case where businesses — as is the case for many across Singapore and the wider Asia Pacific — are amid their digital transformation journeys. Organizations must afford CDOs the tools and space to build out networks, get integration right and begin breaking down silos.
While standardization is a key objective for CDOs, healthy data is an ongoing discipline. It involves tools, of course, but also processes and people. Because data health concerns every employee who has contact with data, the organization's solution for data health must be pervasive.
A CDO’s responsibilities criss-cross an entire organization, making it essential to have people of all backgrounds on their team, including but not limited to governance and privacy ethics experts, data engineers and scientists, IT programmers with expertise in APIs and data observability, security engineers, and project managers who can keep everyone focused on the mission of data transformation. Ultimately, creating a mini-organization within the CDO’s organization can allow CDOs to lead from a strategic place, be well-prepared to face challenges and accomplish their business goals.
JJ Tan, regional sales director for enterprise at Talend, wrote this blog.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of CDOTrends. Image credit: iStockphoto/tawatchaiprakobkit