Organizations typically suffer from a lack of standards around information management. They develop standards on their own although they may use external reference materials. The issue is that most of the standards are definitional, but not validation-based. That is, the standards may say how a data warehouse model should be developed or provide a policy about how reference data should be synchronized.

What is missing is the validation step against these standards. What would be valuable are validation tools that test areas such as complexity while the solution is being developed. When we have simple tools like those used for W3C Markup Validation Service it will be a big help in the industry.

One of the key questions is who should sponsor Information Managements.  The governance sections of MIKE2.0 describes operational organizations and how to get there, but makes the assumption that the CEO, CIO, CFO etc. are supportive of the initiative and will act as sponsors.  What happens when they’re not?

Actually, it seems that this is the case more often than you would wish with many senior executives unwilling to commit to the proper management of information.  It’s not hard to work out the reason why, in most companies (and increasingly in many government organizations) the CEO is only appointed for a short contract with rapid rotation of new talent into the role.  No wonder the CEO acts like a politician looking for the “quick fix” common sense answer that they can put in place within their term and position themselves to be extended (analogous to a politician seeking re-election),

There is hope, however, by looking at the board.  In most companies, board members have a longer tenure than CEOs and also feel more exposed to legal issues.  A quick conversation about the issues of ledger versus non-ledger data (discussed before in this blog) highlights to board members how great their exposure is if they don’t mandate better governance.  Judicious use of passionate middle managers can complete the pincer movement and before you know it the CEO sees Information Management as a mandatory activity and a quick win.