Organising accountabilities for data quality management - a data governance case study

Abstract

Enterprises need corporate data quality management (DQM) that combines business-driven and technical perspectives to respond to strategic and operational challenges that demand high-quality corporate data. Hitherto, companies have assigned accountabilities for DQM mostly to IT departments. They have thereby ignored the organisational issues that are critical to the success of DQM. With data governance, however, companies implement corporate-wide accountabilities for DQM that encompass professionals from business and IT. This study examines a large organisation that has adopted an ad-hoc data governance model to manage its data. It was found that its DQM efforts were hampered mainly by the lack of clear roles and responsibilities and the lack of mandate to carry out data quality improvement initiatives. In order to promote effective DQM, this research identifies a data governance structure with the emphasis on collaboration between business and IT to support organisations.