The future of the CDO: Chief Data Officers need to sit near the top

The logic of the argument is simple. Recently, Information Age spoke to Andy Joss, from Informatica. He told us how chief data officers are central to the success of organisations, as for the future of the CDO: a position on the board will await man

In a funny way, CDOs and gardeners are quite similar. At least we were left with that impression after talking to Andy Joss. “It’s about data. Companies are realising that they must either become a disruptor or find a way to deal with disruption.” For Andy Joss, Head of solutions and data governance, EMEA and Latin America for Informatica, data is key. The way that data is managed and indeed tended and nurtured, maybe in much the same way a gardener tends and nurtures the garden, is vital. That means the chief data officer has been catapulted to somewhere near the top. As for the future of the CDO, Andy reckons that for many, board positions await.

“There are two types of CDOs,” he suggests. There is the CDO, whose role is quite distinct from that of data scientists. In this case, the CDO will focus on strategy — the big picture, driving leadership and strategic direction. Meanwhile, the data scientist is “responsible for tangible things like using analytics and data to drive better customer experience — delivering outcomes that an organisation is looking for.“

In the other case, the CDO and data scientist work closer together, maybe to the extent that the roles are overlap — at least the CDO will often carry out tasks that would normally fall within the data scientist’s remit.

But which one is better? It is tempting to assume that in the case where CDO and data scientists are distinct roles, the chief data officer has more authority — is more highly regarded. “But actually,” suggests Andy, “it is not that straightforward.

“In the second version, CDOs tend to be more outcome focused, but with a big vision too.” In this version of the CDO, maybe there are less silos.

Andy was not suggesting that this second manifestation of the CDO was better, but that it can be better.

Either way, the future role of the CDO, suggests Andy is one of increasing importance.

“Data scientists can be quite expensive, but they are not always as efficient as they can be, as organisations don’t have the right data management capabilities to allow them to do their job as well as they can. Data scientists often spend 80% of their time finding and assessing and preparing data and 20% of their time doing data science.” That is not want companies are paying them for. That’s where the CDO enters the story.