1. Secure sponsor buy-in from C-suite leader. As with any major initiative, success begins by enlisting an executive sponsor who believes in the need to assign business data stewards and allocates the necessary support (political and financial) to make it happen. The sponsor must evangelize the role both to the rest of the C-suite team and to the organization as a whole. Without this backing, the chances of success are greatly reduced.
2. Revise responsibilities to permit business data stewards to take on the role. Asking departmental experts already burdened with a full workload to add business data stewardship to their duties can have a substantial impact on their job. Typically, it swells their workloads by roughly 30 percent. If the organization is serious about improving data governance, it will need to clear time for business data stewards to perform these new, important responsibilities. That may mean hiring additional staff, or it may mean reassigning some of their responsibilities to others. Otherwise, either the regular day-to-day work or the business data steward program is bound to suffer.
3. Put data quality in the hands of business data stewards. Data quality is the core of data governance. If hospital administrators and physicians don’t trust the data believing it is of poor integrity, the value of the entire analytics platform weakens. Most organizations tend to view data quality as an information technology (IT) issue. Yet, IT doesn’t have the domain expertise to determine which data is defective and why. Business data stewards do, which is why they should be the starting point for any quality issues. If the business data stewards are unable to remediate the problem in the source system, they should work with technical data stewards to develop business rules that flag the questionable data as it is brought into the enterprise data warehouse. Better still, flag and rank all data as high, medium or low quality so users can better understand the data on which they’re basing decisions.
4. Provide incentives for reaching target data quality. Once data quality is in the hands of business data stewards, set incentives for them to ensure that it is constantly being monitored and upgraded, and that business data stewards have a personal financial stake in maintaining it. By setting a target data quality threshold and measuring current performance against it (offer bonuses for achieving milestones), the organization can advance data quality quickly. The ROI of this simple move can be significant.
5. Ensure business data stewards have well-defined roles, responsibilities and workflows. As with any new approach, it can be easy for organizations to begin assigning tasks to the business data stewards that aren’t technically part of their job and don’t add value. That’s why it is important for their roles and responsibilities to be well-defined before they start acting in that capacity. Additionally, in order for business data stewards to assist in developing key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics, the organization will need to create two workflows. The first is for the metadata, to ensure the way data is being defined, and the paths to access it, are well-understood throughout the organization. The second is the workflow for attaining consensus on data quality. There must be a process for identifying and remediating data quality and data sourcing issues, and monitoring the results to ensure it is meeting the needs of business users. There are so many potential paths, especially early in the process. The organization needs to work with the business data stewards so they know which areas they need to look at today.
6. Communicate, communicate, communicate. Ongoing communication is the key to sustained success. The organization will need to explain the changes being made, and the role of the business data steward and how it fits in within the organization, to ensure that everyone understands the reasoning behind the newly-created position. As successes start to appear, they should be communicated as well, to generate and sustain excitement among those open to it, and at minimum compliance among those who might otherwise fight it. The more employees who realize the value, the easier it will be to make the transition to an organization with outstanding data governance.
These are some of the actions we have found to be necessary to launch a business data steward program successfully. What have we missed? What have you achieved to ensure your data governance program delivers the results you’re seeking?
John Walton, a Solutions Manager for CTG, is responsible for developing Enterprise Information Management (EIM) strategies. He has more than 30 years of IT experience spanning multiple disciplines and industries, including 20-plus years of healthcare experience primarily in data warehousing, business intelligence and data governance. He can be reached at john.walton@ctg.com.
The views, opinions and positions expressed within these guest posts are those of the author alone and do not represent those of Becker’s Hospital Review/Becker’s Healthcare. The accuracy, completeness and validity of any statements made within this article are not guaranteed. We accept no liability for any errors, omissions or representations. The copyright of this content belongs to the author and any liability with regards to infringement of intellectual property rights remains with them.
