Who owns your data?

We often see our client organizations struggle with this question. Depending on the general perception of the quality and value of data in an organization, varying business and IT levels respond to the question of data ownership differently. It also stems from the various connotations of ownership that people may possess.

To own something could mean that the owner has complete agency over the thing; it could refer to the right to access or revoke someone else's access to it. Then again, it could also refer to the burden of responsibility to create and curate it and to account for its veracity.

In other words, people have specific aspects of ownership in mind when they think about data ownership. In general, one could distill them into three concerns:

Data Security & Availability: 

It would be hard to argue that this is not IT - 100% of the time. 

Data Privacy & Retention Policies:

This aspect largely rests with the business. Privacy and retention-related policies rely on a business definition shaped through the lens of operational risk and compliance. The technology group implements these policies. And while there is often greater awareness of these subjects in IT, technology should still assume ownership of this space. 

Data Quality & Hygiene:

We see this as the third rail in the data ownership conversation. To IT, poor quality data results from misuse of the system by business users, while the business would see this as a result of a poorly implemented system. The reality is the answer is non-binary and would only serve to appropriate blame.

The constructive path for organizations in this position is to work collaboratively to resolve the problem. Our clients have found immense value in leveraging our framework for measurement through operational data hygiene dashboards that can highlight anomalous transactional processes and data quality issues as they occur.  

Reach out to us to find out what Data Hygiene Assessment and Scorecards can do for your business.