Data Ownership – The ‘Goldilocks Dilemma’

Posted on May 4, 2022 by iansmith64 — Leave a comment

I was putting together some pages covering Data Governance – I’ve spent a lot of my recent contracts doing various aspects of Data Governance/Data management – and I felt I wanted to share a dilemma? Maybe that’s overstating it; maybe, heated discussion is better?

The definition of a Data Owner that I put forward was:

A Data Owner is a nominated individual who has responsibility for a particular data asset

In most conversations about Data Ownership, we see that it’s an executive-level role. It has to be a decision-maker, someone who sees the value in the data they are responsible for.

Almost by default we talk about executive-level, or maybe first tier down from board level.

During a recent piece of work, the project team had a discussion about this. Previous consultants had advocated for, and had publsihed a draft ownership model showing executive-level Data Owners. The group CFO, COO, etc were all noted as Data Owners.

Right level or not? (BTW here’s the page I drafted about Data Ownership)

We went through the predicatble points:

  • The role needs seniority
  • The role needs to focus minds
  • The role needs to have a clear view of the downstream Data Landscape
  • The role needs to abstract the data from the system(s)

These sorts of points – and you will be able to articulate your own versions of why ownership needs to be at a senior level – tripped off the tongue. Just when we thought that this had already been sorted, we stopped:

“But is a CFO (or any other C-level officer) too far removed from day-to-day operations to take on the responsibilities we want for a Data Owner?”

Here was our ‘Goldilocks  dilemma’  – senior enough to have sufficient gravitas, but not so senior that they were detached from playing an active role.

Our solution? We enhanced our roster. We started with:

Data Owner, Data Steward and Data Custodian

We finished with:

Data Sponsor, Data Owner, Data Steward and Data Custodian

Our Data Sponsor role had two principal themes:

  1. Ensuring that Data Governance was supported and supported the data that needed it
  2. Articulating the strategic goals for our data

We tweaked our Data Owner role to have the following key themes:

  1. Decision making
  2. Identifiying data opportunities

What do you think? Good solution? Bad solution? Does the ‘sponsor’ role really exist?

Posted in Data Governance, Uncategorized

2021……

Posted on January 17, 2021 by iansmith64 — Leave a comment

Well, I finally got back into a mindset to blog again.

It has been a very odd few years away. Several times I sat at my keyboard and decided I needed to blog, and sure enough, writers block hit.

This time it’s different! (No I don’t think it really is either)

So in the intervening years there have been a few changes, and hopefully some of these will give me a bit of impetus to blog.

Just this morninmg I have been working on a Jupyter Notebook covering the Titanic dataset. I am going to write this up and try to talk through what there is.
I have been doing quite a bit of work with Power BI and other Data Visualisation tools, so, again, I can hopefully talk through the bits I have scratched around the surface.

Posted in Uncategorized

2015 or…1993?

Posted on January 31, 2015 by iansmith64 — Leave a comment

I saw this article on both Mashable and the BBC  about China imposing new IT guidelines

The Chinese government has asked issued new guidelines that would require hi tech suppliers to insert backdoors, monitor ports and adopt Chinese encryption algorithms initially for the Chinese financial markets, but later more broadly across the Chinese market.

From a Chinese perspective this makes perfect sense, they have already noted that being reliant on foreign technology represents a strategic risk. Let’s face it, the Edward Snowden revelations haven’t really painted the US as a hands-off, laissez faire kind of player. Indeed the US has previous, as they say in all the best gangster movies. If you’re old enough to remember 1993, then the NSA’s vaunted ‘Clipper’ architecture would bring a smile.

In 1993 the NSA proposed a chipset designed primarily for voice communications. It had built-in backdoors to allow the NSA to listen in. Announced in 1993, by 1996 the project was defunct. The technology was based around the telecoms companies engaging in ‘key escrow’ to hold copies of the encryption keys with an escrow agent for use by NSA. How strange that confidence in a government agency using privileged access to a resource wasn’t high.

Roll-forward 20 years and …well, plus ca change?

This time its the Chinese government calling the shots. We see already that Chinese company Huawei is blocked from certain contracts, and in the UK BT, who use Huawei networking equipment have elaborate procedures to try and assert no backdoor exists already. Here’s the link to the government’s response to intelligence and security committee report on this.

I wonder where this will go. Will China modify the guidelines? Will we see product lines diverge? One line suitable for the Chinese market, complete with Sino-compliant features, the other suitable for the world outside China. Or will the features designed to protect the Chinese market themselves becomes vulnerabilities – a ready made hackers framework?

 

Tagged with: ,
Posted in Uncategorized

Microsoft – an ‘At last!’ and a plea for the future

Posted on January 18, 2015 by iansmith64 — Leave a comment

I’d started a draft posting, then parked it. Until I got a call yesterday from “The technical department of the windows operating system” – they are base din Leicester, but declined to tell me more before hanging up on me!

Anyway, here’s the post I had in the works…

I saw this the other week on Cnet:

http://www.cnet.com/uk/news/microsoft-combats-tech-support-scammers-with-lawsuit/

I’ll be honest, I thought ‘about time’. I’m sure others have had to deal with the array of calls you get. I’ve had ‘Colin’ call me from ‘the Windows company’ (They don’t sell double glazing but they make the ‘operating system on my computer’).

Thankfully I am quite tech savvy (or at least, I like to think I am), so the minute I get one of these types of calls, I try and get any information I can out of them. Usually no good, but occasionally you might get a registered address from a flustered call agent.

What would really help would be a way for us to provide Microsoft with this information. I’ve emailed addresses once or twice, but it seems really hard for me to engage with Microsoft on this – and let’s face it, it’s someone trying to diss their name!

So, what I’d like is an online form, link it to my Microsoft account – let’s face it, Windows 8 got us to register and set up microsoft accounts to login, so you can authenticate me and engage with me. And if the information you need isn’t immediately available, write me a tool, or tell me how to collect what you need.

Tagged with: ,
Posted in Uncategorized

Citizen Smith

Posted on December 5, 2014 by iansmith64 — Leave a comment

Okay, if you are old enough to remember Robert Lyndsey’s Wolfie Smith then you can feel you’re on the inside.

Another difficult day at the office triggered a slightly surreal conversation “Who’s to blame?” The conversation soon took a turn to encompass Citizen Smith’s famous “Come the glorious day..” line.

So with tongue firmly in cheek, and apologies to those I now state are guilty of crimes against common sense – I hope they will forgive me – here goes.

“Come the glorious day, Lord Sugar, David Bowie and Walt Disney will be first up against the wall.”

Okay so why these three? What heinous crimes could these three have committed?

Lord Sugar, the UK’s business mogul who is the centre of ‘The Apprentice’ has perpetuated some of the greatest, yet most painful television viewing. Everyone will now be reeling off their favourite Apprentice moment or quote. (I can hear the echoes of “I’m a whole field of ponies” already!)

We’ve seen inept, uneducated, rude, dysfunctional wannabes trying hard to…errr.. do anything it seems. To misquote Neil Armstrong:

“The ego has landed”

Project management (a noble profession – honestly) has descended to a skill of using a smartphone in a stupid fashion. Planning? Assessment? Prioritisation? Triage? Understanding dependencies? The list goes on.

I can’t believe that the Prince2 foundation hasn’t sanctioned a hitsquad yet.

Posted in Uncategorized

The new frontier in data analysis?

Posted on April 7, 2014 by iansmith64 — Leave a comment

Scan_Pic0001

Where is the new frontier in data analysis?

I tried to work this out.Let me explain the question further. I’m a bit of a geek. I try to hide it, but in those moments no-one is looking too closely, I crunch numbers. Whereabouts? I cycle a bit. I play golf – a bit, and I invest in stocks, shares and gilts – a bit.

At the moment I’m trying to workout how I can build my stock portfolio – it sounds very grand – into a decent High Yield Portfolio. How do I work out if we are at the bottom of a cycle, and I can buy cheap, sell high and retire at my leisure just after buying Mauritius – for cash!

Likewise my golf. I don’t play enough these days, but I steadfastly record data as I go round the course. Fairways hit off the tee, long irons/short irons, putts, up & downs, etc… My scorecard looks like one of those old IBM punchcards.

Finally my cycling. Simple measures such as power, cadence and the like.

I’ll not go into detail, but each of these simple examples is about me – as an individual – trying to understand the nature and shape of my activity, being able to quantify it and hopefully, being able to use the statistical measures to improve. (I can feel Lord Kelvin applauding from his grave)

Golf is a great one – I like to think I’m a long hitter, but thumping the ball a long way and seeing it roll off the fairway and head into the undergrowth isn’t fun. Likewise, understanding and playing to get in better position, so I can use a shorter club (usually a more accurate club) means my game (net score) improves.

I’ve just finished reading Michael Lewis’ book ‘Moneyball’. He talks about how the Oakland Athletics started using data analysis to roster the team rather than more conventional wisdom. They were blessed with geeks who dared to challenge the accepted wisdom and champion new measures. Or maybe they were blessed with people who were prepared to think a little differently, and to commit to their ideals.

We see in football (soccer – depending on where you are in the world) the adoption of systems like ProZone. (I saw this link to a story about Hoffenheim’s use of data analysis Would Geeks make better football managers  ) I wonder how long before our kids’ clubs have a Chief Data Officer? I might try and sound out the committee at my daughter’s swim club, maybe Weston-super-mare needs a ‘data analytics sub-committee’?

Tagged with: , , ,
Posted in data analysis

Schools might not have books anymore!

Posted on March 23, 2014 by iansmith64 — Leave a comment

I liked this story in the news.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-26249041

It appealed to my inner-geek, and also made me think about the amount of paper I lug around.

I like the idea of kids having a tablet or similar device to simply the way they can interact and learn. But am really taken by the statement by the head teacher that, as Robert Peston (the BBC’s business editor) would say was “stating the bloomin’ obvious”, the quality of the teacher was most important.

A tool is a tool, a good tool is a good tool, nothing more. Using these devices is great, it breaks down boundaries, enabling new methods and approaches to learning, but it doesn’t take the place of some good teaching ability.

Tagged with: , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized

Big Data Institute

Posted on March 19, 2014 by iansmith64 — Leave a comment

I’m always quite sceptical of politicians when they extol the virtues of a dead genius, but in amongst all the fluff that is usual on budget day, there was this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-26651179

I read Andrew Hodges ‘Enigma of Intelligence’ years ago, and of course Hofstader’s various books (Godel, Escher, Bach, Mind’s I and Metamagical Themas) over the course of university. 

So, provided that the ‘Big Data’ analysis is not in some way related to the cut in Bingo tax, then this has to be a good thing.

Tagged with: , ,
Posted in Uncategorized

The Big Day

Posted on March 11, 2014 by iansmith64 — Leave a comment

Finally made it! Got here a few minutes early, walking around a university again feels strange.

I’ve not been asked whether I’ve voted in student elections yet. Lewis advocates education and democracy, but I am still tending towards a vote for Super Mario.

Have prepared several short slide decks, so the direction we’ll take can twist and turn depending on how the mood strikes.

Wish me well!

University of Portsmouth, hello!

20140311-124753.jpg

Posted in Uncategorized

An Internet of Opportunities

Posted on February 25, 2014 by iansmith64 — Leave a comment

I was reading some statistics the other day.  How would these types of numbers make you think about the type of services you were designing and about how your business might focus itself:

  • E-commerce accounts for £44billion of the total UK retail sales
  • There are more people on the planet with mobile phones than toothbrushes
  • More tablet devices are predicted to be sold in 2015 than desktop and  laptop computers combined
  • Facebook would be the 3rd or 4th largest nation by population

Apple’s iPhone and iPad lines reported sales of 51m and 26m respectively. The global PC market in 2013 was 316m units.

I guess we have finally embraced this mobile living. The road warrior is no longer the exception to the rule, the mobile transactor is the rule.

As a programmer in earlier years, we always heard about ‘the fallacy of the reliable network’. Never being able to rely on a network connection was the order of the day. In this massively mobile world we now see, what are the modern equivalents? Or have the same old fallacies – the reliable network, the network is secure, etc… have they changed at all or do they remain, just as they were?

 

 

Posted in mobile design