InfoBluePrint, South African provider of specialist data management services, has recently revamped its Education Services portfolio, and will soon be running a one-day course entitled: “Introduction to Data Governance & Data Stewardship” in Johannesburg and Cape Town.
Bryn Davies, Managing Director of InfoBluePrint, says the company has seen a dramatic increase in interest around data governance over the past 12 months.
“We have noticed many SA corporates grappling with data governance, and with issues such as where and how to start a programme that delivers positive results without getting bogged down in data politics and misunderstandings,” says Davies. “Many fledgling data governance programmes, despite the best of intentions, are not correctly framed or initiated, leading to even more confusion about who owns data and what should be done about issues such as poor data quality and sub-optimal business intelligence,” he adds.
The one-day course, which will be run on 21 June in Johannesburg and on 23 June in Cape Town, will cover the issues facing an organisation considering or embarking on a data governance initiative, providing a roadmap for a successful implementation process. It explains how data governance, of which data stewardship is an essential component, is a formalised programme for governing the quality, consistency, usability, security, and availability of data and information, and how it is closely linked to the notions of data ownership and custodianship, with clearly defined roles, responsibilities and accountability.
It further discusses the importance of thorough preparation for formal data quality management, the steps needed to prepare for and implement an enterprise data governance strategy in order to improve data and information management and achieve compliance, and how to present this strategy to the organisation's stakeholders, as a value-added business proposition, in order to obtain management buy-in and commitment.
After setting the context for data governance and starting to build a framework, the course covers topics such as:
* The objectives of data governance
* Assessing the current state of data governance in your organisation - a maturity model
* Data governance strategy development
* Roles and responsibilities, such as data stewardship
* Artefacts and tools to support data governance
* Monitoring the efficacy of data governance
* The important links between data governance, data quality and master data management
The course will be presented by Di Joseph, who has more than 40 years' experience in data management, data quality management, data migration, data strategy development and enterprise information management. She has presented papers at several international data management and business rules conferences in Europe and the United States, and she has shared the same platform with international experts such as John Zachman and Larry English.
“As has been the case in the US and Europe, data governance is becoming a hot topic in South Africa,” says Davies. He adds that increasing demands placed on those in charge of governance, risk and compliance (GRC) has highlighted that the data and information maintained by South African organisations is a fundamental element of doing business, and therefore GRC extends to the data itself. Furthermore, parts of King III, and in particular, the Protection of Personal Information (POPI) Bill are fundamentally about the proper governance of data pertaining to individuals, and companies will find it impossible to comply with POPI without the effective implementation of governance of data pertaining to their customers and employees.
To register for the course or for further information, interested parties should visit InfoBluePrint's Web site at www.infoblueprint.co.za.
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