When Gartner’s research vice-president Mario Faria said that by the end of 2019, 50 per cent of chief data officers would be seen to fail, it was hardly the stuff of recruitment posters. Yet Mr Faria also said that by that time 90 per cent of large companies would have a chief data officer (CDO) – a remarkable rise for a job that didn’t exist at the turn of the century.
Success is hard to judge, especially in a role that has yet to be well defined by industry, while failure can be starkly obvious. If your company is on the front pages for a major data breach or privacy violation, it’s a bad day to be CDO.
To find out what makes a good day, and how success can be planned for and measured, the views of two CDOs from two very different organisations, one in financial services, the other in scientific research, are informative. Both agree that the bottom line for success is in the overall health of the organisation; from there, things diverge.
Nic Orton is chief data officer for LexisNexis Risk Solutions, a global data analytics organisation that provides customer insight to the financial services sector and other industries. “The success of my role is considered in the ultimate performance of the business, but more directly I ensure we use the right data in the right way,” he says. “There is a consensus that the data universe is doubling every two years, with a 50-fold growth between 2010 and 2020. I promote innovation, but also ensure focus and trust.”
To that end, says Mr Orton, his success depends on creating a common language for data between business units inside the organisation, and thence out to customers and partners. “We have four main metrics: uplift to products through added value; insight and intelligence for ourselves on customers, competitors and markets; potential for advanced analytics; and quality.”
Quality is judged in seven dimensions, including completeness, validity and consistency. “When you see your language being used elsewhere in the organisation, it builds confidence that there’s clarity across the organisation, which means we build trust in ourselves that we are using data correctly,” says Mr Orton. “That becomes visible outside the organisation and builds trust in relationships.” In this way, governance stops being a hindrance to building a company’s use of data and starts to support it; a sign of a job well done.
Brenden Dalton, CDO and chief information officer for the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Canberra, oversees data for more than 5,000 people engaged in disparate research. He focuses on managing data risk against opportunity. “The success criteria for a chief data officer need to flow from an organisation’s digital strategy,” he says.
