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Data Governance - It's Not Someone Else's Job; It's Mine

By Ian Cameron, CIO OSCRE International

The shift to more effective data governance has not had a prominent industry position - until now. It's a term and a practice you're going to hear a lot more about in the near future and OSCRE has stepped forward to help guide it's evolution in the industry.

At a recent industry event hosted by OSCRE, over two-thirds of the companies participating reported they are hearing much more about data governance from their leadership team and the company as a whole. What's causing the rise of interest? Nearly 70% said they see it coming from:

Building an enterprise-wide information architecture
The evolution of outsourcing contracts with data management features Formal inclusion of data ownership in business processes, and
The development of a formal data governance program

The top reasons data governance is getting more interest at these companies include:

It's critical to data quality and decision making
Provides a foundation to business intelligence and analytics It becomes an integrating factor across the company and Creates a competitive advantage when it's done right

What's interesting is that many companies have been looking at this for some time and now have full-blown initiatives underway in 2016 and 2017. Their primary objective is to build more capabilities into their own organizations and with their internal and external partners. Here are some examples:

Global corporate real estate group - has an executive responsible for Quality, Governance, and Process and has built its entire information architecture around data exchange standards
Global financials service company - built it's information strategy for real estate starting with a firm Data Governance framework

Top 5 global investment manager - established data governance capability a few years ago and continues to build it up as a core competency
Global real estate services firm - established global data governance unit to support all major accounts

It's no longer someone else's responsibility or restricted to the IT department's responsibility. It's a commitment required of everyone regardless of their position or role in the company, and impacts those you provide information to or that you are dependent upon for information.

To learn more about this important topic, please contact OSCRE at info@oscre.org