Digital transformation was definitely the buzz phrase of 2017. And while many businesses like Airbnb, Amazon, Uber, and others have created game-changing industries leveraging data, the majority of businesses use less than one percent of their available data.
The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has been a real catalyst for investing in data governance. However, organizations are recognizing that if they are to make the investment, it needs to impact both the top and bottom line.
With that said, here are five GDPR and data governance predictions for 2018:
GDPR will be the new Y2K.
Remember when we partied like it was 1999? CIOs around the world scrambled to ensure that their systems were Y2K-compliant for the stroke of midnight Jan 1, 2000. We feared that planes would fall from the sky, the financial system would halt, and all-around Armageddon would ensue, so we spent an estimated $300 billion (half of that in the United States).
On May 25, 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation will go into effect. To process personal [customer] data under GDPR, businesses will need to document their reasoning and show a legal basis as to why they require personal data. Penalties for failing to meet GDPR requirements could lead to fines of up to €20 million or 4 percent of the company’s global annual turnover for the previous year, whichever is greater. This level of financial penalty could have a serious impact on a company’s future, so you will see businesses scrambling to prepare.
Data Governance 2.0 will take hold because Data Governance 1.0 was a failure.
The age of data governance 1.0 was characterized by IT serving as data custodians, mainly cataloging data elements without a grasp of their meaning or relationships. Consequently, the costs of controlling data risk often became needlessly excessive and opportunities to drive business agility were missed. It was a total failure.
In 2018, data governance 2.
