The Status of [Data] Governance

In the past 10 days I have addressed DAMA chapters in Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin on the topic of governance. As part of the presentation, I attempted to learn the status of governance initiatives within the participating organizations. These organizations ranged from the small (< 1000 employees) to the very large.

There was no enthusiasm surrounding the state of any governance activity and only a few who were even willing to say that they had any governance in operation.

As a result of this admittedly informal survey, I am willing to state that recognizable [data] governance is virtually non-existent. But wait, you say, I have read press releases about enterprise data governance being rolled out at some really big-name corporations.

I have done some personal research at one such big-name company by interviewing in person or on the phone several individuals within the corporation who are directly involved at several different levels. This more formal survey revealed a considerable degree of anxiety among those directly responsible for some piece of the effort. At the same time there was a sense of interested detachment from those involved in the "governance" of Enterprise Data Governance. Meanwhile those who should have been heavily involved by virtue of their job responsibilities but weren't formally part of the structure had a pretty fatalistic attitude about the whole thing.

The overall impression I took away was in the nature of the Emperor's New Clothes. The comment I heard most frequently (from every one of those interviewed) was, "We're making progress." These people all have a history with this company that goes back to 1992 and earlier so I imagine that when they stop to consider the difference between then and now, progress of many kinds is apparent.

I'm all for making progress, but I have to wonder if we aren't too easily satisfied. If those who set out on the Oregon trail had been satisfied with progress at this rate, their great-grandchildren would have been overtaken in their Connestoga wagons by the construction of Interstate 80. It would seem that one of the worst things that can happen to an organization (company, corporation, institution) is to create a bubble within which to operate.

Many organizations today seem to have done this and those with the most identifiable corporate culture and the strongest brand have done the most to create their own distinct and separate reality in which "making progress" is not only good enough, it is the pinnacle of achievement.

In the USA, we have a model of governance that was the first of its kind and, because of the model's structure, is viewed as something that can be duplicated elsewhere. We are accustomed to thinking of this model as democracy but that is a mistake. John Adams (successor to George Washington) got it right when he analyzed it this way, "We are a government of laws and not of men."

The corporate equivalent of laws is standards. Governance based on men (and women) runs on approval while governance based on standards) laws runs on compliance. Clearly compliance based governance where compliance can be verified by audit is vastly preferable to approval based governance in which approvals are both slow and subject to reversal for any of a myriad of reasons.

No system of governance is perfect, but a living system in which standards are subject to periodic review and can be modified to accommodate external changes, must be preferred over the alternative. Where will the leaders come from who will do for corporate governance what Jefferson, Madison, Adams, Franklin and others did for national governance?