The role of technology in empowering the CIO and CDO office

'As the demand for the CDO office increases in momentum, it is still ultimately the CIO's responsibility to support the infrastructure needs for this function,' argues Janani Dumbleton, principal consultant at Experian Data Quality UK

With data moving higher up the business agenda we're seeing pressure mounting on those responsible to deliver the benefits senior management expect to derive from it.

As a result, a number of challenges have emerged for both chief information officers (CIOs) and chief data officers (CDOs) alike, caused by a lack of suitable technology that's ultimately having a time and cost impact on resources, and on their ability to support each other and deliver on data strategy.

To overcome these, CIOs need to empower the CDO office, as it becomes established, and ease the burden on their own resources in the interim.

The CDO should be the principal enabler of data-driven business, but while CDO appointments are on the rise, they are not yet in the mainstream, which means CIOs often find themselves driving data management.

Even where a CDO is in place, it is still ultimately the CIO's responsibility to ensure the right data infrastructure is available. Indeed, technology innovation has the potential to drastically improve the effectiveness CDO office, or similar data management functions that support data governance.

Having spoken to CIOs and CDOs, I believe there are three main challenges that impact both roles - all of which stem from a lack of fit-for-purpose technology.

Challenge 1: Data preparation

Data users either in the business or the CDO office, rely on CIO resources to source and prepare the data required by them for analysis purposes. This typically involves producing data sets from multiple sources and with complex selection criteria.

Data users are unable to achieve this as the skills required are often technical, requiring knowledge of coding or programming languages.

The challenge for the CIO is these requests can be ad-hoc in nature, often clash with other planned activities and may require rework, and the frustration for the CDO office is that the data is not available in time, delaying follow-on activities.

The solution for the CIO is to provide the CDO office with technology that makes it easier for end-users to source, prepare and build data sets. Data users will often know the logic and criteria required to build their target data sets.

Challenge 2: Reporting and monitoring

Data users need to be able to present back the results of their findings, and also monitor the progress of data improvement over time. This may require advanced reporting tools and the creation of dashboards. The trouble for data users is that traditional business intelligence (BI) technology require technical skills to use, while many less demanding self-service BI tools do not provide accelerators for disciplines such as data quality and governance.

Consequently, the CIO office is often recruited to develop these reports, which can become software development projects in themselves. From a CIO perspective, these projects may not have been scheduled or budgeted, and again, the data users often have to wait for the end product.

The solution is to provide the CDO office with technology that makes it easier for end users to develop their own reports, but with built-in accelerators for key disciplines such as data quality and governance. The key here again is reducing or eliminating the need for coding or programming.

Challenge 3: Adhering to information governance principles

Finally, a key concern for the CIO is ensuring any technology investment supports the principles of information governance, such as data security and reducing silos of data across the business. Hence, the solution implemented should allow the CIO office to control the data access and export centrally, thus ensuring that ease of use does not compromise good governance.

Whatever stage an organisation is at in its journey towards implementing a CDO office, CIOs ultimately play a major role. As I've illustrated above, having the right technology in place can present bring benefits in terms of greater efficiency and empowering the business to take control of its own data quality.

Janani Dumbleton is principal consultant at Experian Data Quality UK.