CDO Matters Ep. 09 | Disrupting Data Governance with Laura Madsen

The data space isn’t what it was 20 years ago. As enterprises change the way they conduct business, we should also change our traditional approaches to data governance. In his latest discussion, Profisee Head of Data Strategy Malcolm Hawker talks with Moxy Analytics CEO Laura Madsen to dive deeply into the topic of data governance and discuss Laura’s love/hate relationship with a field that can often defies logic in today’s modern data estates. Laura challenges many of the more traditional approaches to governance that are clearly not working for many companies — most of which have not changed fundamentally in decades. Laura makes a compelling case to “blow it all up” and start completely from scratch with approaches to data governance that are more scalable and adaptable to modern business needs. Throughout the discussion, Laura takes aim at other data management gold standards, including what she sees as the absurdity of aspiring to a single definition for anything today. Laura advances the idea that data quality is not absolute and that striving for data quality standards that aren’t defined or measured is a fool’s errand. The discussion of data quality not existing without data governance — and vice versa — is an insightful exploration into the critical need to measure and define data quality metrics and standards. Laura highlights the paradox that having one without the other makes it impossible to know if you succeed at either quality or governance. Laura highlights other data-related technologies as critical components to enable scale while also acknowledging they cannot “magically solve all of our problems.” The discussion concludes with a focus on the radical democratization of data, a concept that Laura believes is critical to breaking through old, unproductive patterns of data management. In this transition toward data democratization, Chief Data Officers (CDOs) will know they are on the right path when an environment exists for users to question the data, where those questions form the foundation for ongoing data improvements. This episode of CDO Matters should appeal to any CDO who feels their data governance program is ill-suited to support their ever-evolving business needs. It should inspire CDOs to revisit their assumptions about data governance — and potentially motivate many to consider some radical changes to governance “business as usual.” Forget what you think you know about single sources of truth, data quality metrics or top-down approaches to governance — Laura Madsen challenges all of these concepts (and more) in this provocative episode of CDO Matters.