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The Chief Data Officer (CDO) should be responsible for the overall big data strategy within an organisation. If big data is implemented throughout the organisation, at all different levels and departments, the Chief Data Officer will have the responsibility to ensure the strategy is implemented correctly, the data is correct and secure and the customers privacy is governed correctly. As data-driven decision-making becomes increasingly important in organisations, the CDO should be a member of the executive board, reporting directly to the Chief Executive Office.
Data in itself does not bring any value. It only becomes valuable when analysed and turned into information. Therefore, the role could also be named Chief Information Officer. However, in order to stress the importance of data and the enterprise-wide governance and utilisation of data as an asset it should be named Chief Data Officer. Emphasising the data with a Chief Data Officer can spur a data-driven culture that will lead to an information-centric organisation.
The Chief Data Officer should oversee all the different big data initiatives going on within an organisation. He or she should craft and manage standard data operating procedures, data accountability policies, data quality standards, data privacy and ethical policies as well as being able to understand how to combine different data sources within the organisation with each other. The Chief Data Officer should have the total overview of what is going on within the organisation related to data and represent this as a strategic business asset at board level.
The Chief Data Office should also be responsible for defining the strategic big data priorities within the organisation. As the CDO has the total big data overview, he or she can identify new business opportunities based on the available data and guide the different big data teams within the organisation on which data to store, analyse and use for what purposes. In the end the CDO should be responsible to generate more revenue or decrease costs through the use of data.
Another responsibility of the Chief Data Officer should be to adapt the four ethical guidelines discussed earlier on the platform. While driving the usage of data within the organisation, the CDO should also be the data conscience of the company.
The Chief Data Officer should enforce radical transparency about what sort of data is collected and for what it is used. Consumers should be made aware what data has been collected about them and allow them to delete it in case the data is not stored anonymously. In addition, the CDO should enable users to simply adjust any privacy setting related to data collected. If this is done throughout the organisation, it will build trust.
With all data collected and stored, security is extremely crucial. Therefore, the security of data should be discussed at board level. Being hacked or when data is stolen can seriously endanger a company, therefore this should be discussed at the highest level.
In the end, the CDO should be made accountable for whatever data is collected, stored, shared, sold or analysed as well as how the data is collected, stored, shared, sold or analysed. Big data privacy and ethics are too important not to be discussed at C-level.
The Chief Data Officer should also stimulate that all data within the organisation becomes readily available for all departments (of course except for sensitive data). Sharing data throughout the company can make the company more efficient and drive innovation. Especially in organisations where data and information is in silos, the CDO should tackle the problem of separate data. So the Chief Data Officer should share internal best practices and prevent that the wheel is reinvented again and again.
Furthermore, the CDO should be the owner of the data within the organisation. Quite often business and IT cannot agree who owns what data within an organisation and therefore the CDO should own all data, more over because he or she also has the end-responsibility of all data. In the end the Chief Data Officer should bridge the gap between IT and Business. As big data should be a marketing and strategy matter, with support from IT, the CDO should be able to leverage and represent all different interests.
In addition to the above Chief Data Officer skill set, there are also some other important qualifications that cannot be forgotten:
- Strong leadership and C-Suite/Board communication skills;
- Experience in leading major information management programs in key business areas;
- Expertise or at least familiarity with big data solutions such as Hadoop, MapReduce and/or HBase;
- Experience in operationalizing data governance and data Quality;
- Familiarity with the major big data solutions and products available in the market;
- Expertise in creating and deploying best practices and methodologies;
- Knowledge about managing and leading technical big data teams across multiple departments;
- Knowledge about building and supporting big data teams across the organisation;
- Knowledge about developing business cases for technical projects with a lot of uncertainties;
- Familiarity with different modelling techniques such as data modelling and/or predictive modelling.
In the end, the Chief Data Officer should have a mix between technical background and business background. He or she should not be too technical, as it could lead to too much focus on the bits and bytes instead of the strategy. However, a CDO without technical background is not able to understand and talk to his or her big data team members. The balance between these two skills is important so the CDO will be able to smoothly navigate the technical and political hurdles.
The trend of Chief Data Officers is growing and more and more organisations are making a seat available in the boardroom for the CDO. With the increasing importance of big data, more organisations should do this as it will drive innovation, lead to an information-centric culture and eventually will impact profits positively.
