Driving Data Projects

1 DATA FOUNDATIONS

THE BASICS

Data has traditionally been managed by a combination of information technology (IT), operations and finance. Over the past 10–15 years, the Chief Data Officer (CDO) role has appeared on the executive scene. While it is not yet a universally used title, the CDO role began with reporting through these functions and is beginning to be considered separately.

The CDO’s primary mission, though not always stated directly, is to cultivate data as a strategic asset for the organisation. This premise shifts the emphasis on merely embracing the most efficient approach to managing ad hoc requests for a data pipeline to a discrete group of stakeholders, to prioritising data (and perhaps even the internal mechanisms of the ...