More Data Governance

The second day of the conference began with an entertaining keynote by Terry Goodbody from Pinnacle Entertainment. Pinnacle is a gaming/gambling company. I hadn't really thought about the data required to managing a gambling operation, but it is extensive, and compliance is a big deal. The casinos can be closed down if data and operations are not compliant with the state and federal gambling commission regulations. Terry said that everyone in his I.T. organization that has access to corporate data must be trained and licensed by the commission. His presentation was enlightening and full of funny antecdotes.

I also attended Pablo Riboldi's session on Data Governance at a Large, Bureaucratic, Non-profit Organization - Year 1. Pablo is implementing Data Governance at the LDS Church, a huge organization with many applications and a lot of data. He provided a pragmatic view of the process, including those things that did and did not work. He also had some very good "take-aways" and examples of policies, principles and communications that he developed. The principles were well grounded in basic data management principles of data as a corporate asset.

In the afternoon, the Special Interest Group for "Building the Business Case for Data Governance" was also very useful, led by Danette McGilvray. We broke up into groups and did a short exercise on writing a business case statement for a particular audience, then shared the results. The Keynote Panel on Ethics was also thought provoking. The panelists all provided various perspectives on ethical and legal challenges related to data. Dominique Shelton, an attorney, provided insight on some of the legal issues emerging related to Web 2.0 and data.

Overall, it was another full day that sparked many new ideas to ponder.