Governance from Within

With the governance of data, it needs to apply to what already exists, but will also have to accommodate with what will likely exist. For example, whilst there is scant data on where a household typically shops; it can be inferred from apparently irrelevant information like a car driven and amount of petrol purchased. A type of vehicle provides the mileage, and when combined with the volume of fuel suggests typical driving distances. And in turn, suggest most likely shopping destination within a radius from the home. In another example, DNA profiles of individuals suggest a propensity for disease, but when combined with the content of food consumed (from information on food content) and activity (from digital exercise trackers); can be used to mitigate or reduce the same propensities. None of this data was available to begin, but delivered when multiple sources of almost irrelevant sources are combined. Both these support the need to governance from within, as generalized frameworks will never be as effective.

In addition, governance needs to effectively account for the constantly changing states of data. The constantly changing dynamics of data as described in terms of often referred to as the Vs of big data i.e. its volume, variety, velocity, veracity, and value; however, means that governance of the content in the data is also ever changing.

The focus of governance needs to be on understanding the content, not the containers of data. Driven in frenzy, common approaches many executives apply include a solution-based approach enabled by artificial intelligence, the cloud, and mobile technologies. Few take sufficient effort or time to really understand data. Simple names can infer gender, ethnicity, age and often also language capabilities depending on how this information is linked and associated. In this example, keeping names may be a breach of personal information, but if the additional elements could be inferred before the names are removed significantly enhance its utility. So, governance needs to cater to the timing of what is stored, as well as how and when it is used.

Whatever form of governance is adopted and used, it is obvious no one size fits all especially in the midst of exploding availability of public, commercial and freely available or Big.