GDPR

Did GDPR highlight the robustness of your Data Architecture, the strength of your Data Governance and the fitness of your Data Strategy?

Peter James Thomas data architecture, data governance, strategy

GDPR

So GDPR Day is upon us – the sun still came up and the Earth is still spinning (these facts may be related of course). I hope that most GDPR teams and the Executives who have relied upon their work were able to go to bed last night secure in the knowledge that a good job had been done and that their organisations and customers were protected. Undoubtedly, in coming days, there will be some stories of breaches of the regulations, maybe some will be high-profile and the fines salutary, but it seems that most people have got over the line, albeit often by Herculean efforts and sometimes by the skins of their teeth.

Does it have to be like this?

A well-thought-out Data Architecture embodying a business-focussed Data Strategy and intertwined with the right Data Governance, should combine to make responding to things like GDPR relatively straightforward. Were they in your organisation?

If instead GDPR compliance was achieved in spite of your Data Architectures, Governance and Strategies, then I suspect you are in the majority. Indeed years of essentially narrow focus on GDPR will have consumed resources that might otherwise have gone towards embedding the control and leverage of data into the organisation’s DNA.

Maybe now is a time for reflection. Will your Data Strategy, Data Governance and Data Architecture help you to comply with the next set of data-related regulations (and it is inevitable that there will be more), or will they hinder you, as will have been the case for many with GDPR?

If you feel that the answer to this question is that there are significant problems with how your organisation approaches data, then maybe now is the time to grasp the nettle. Having helped many companies to both develop and execute successful Data Strategies, you could start by reading my trilogy on creating an Information / Data Strategy:

  1. General Strategy
  2. Situational Analysis
  3. Completing the Strategy

I’m also more than happy to discuss your data problems and opportunities either formally or informally, so feel free to get in touch.
 
 

From: peterjamesthomas.com, home of The Data and Analytics Dictionary, The Anatomy of a Data Function and A Brief History of Databases