Data Governance in Practice
You are the CIO of Toys for Big Boys, an importer of Chinese-manufactured recreational products for the adult market. Examples of their products include radio-controlled helicopters and airplanes with and without integrated video cameras, radio-controlled autos and boats, electronic games aimed at the grown-up market, and various electronic devices that use technology for doing everyday tasks. Originally, you began the company with your friend, the CEO, and sold wholesale only, but you have recently expanded to a number of regional offices and a national order fulfillment center. You have also agreed that direct online retail marketing will be added to the business model.
Management has noticed that the IT and information systems have been having many more difficulties with quality of data. You are concerned about trusting the figures, which take in many more transactions from across the nation than last year. With the addition of the online retail division, you are desperately afraid of major data problems ahead, let alone the increased threats from expanded online business. Each regional office is well staffed with an IT department and even data managers. In addition there is a data steward at the main office whom you trust, but the workload is getting too great and he does not have time to stay in the loop with upper management.
Should you set up a data-governance position at the vice-presidential level? What would be the job concept and job description? How would you structure a data-governance division and what policies and procedures might be needed? Is there help on a consulting basis you might obtain during the transition?
Assignment Requirements
For this assignment, research and write a short (36 page body section) paper that includes the following. See the Data Governance in Practice Scoring Guide for more information on how your work will be graded.
Research data quality standards for this business, and provide reasonable samples of data that might indicate quality problems requiring data governance.
Describe the job requirements, duties, limitations, and interrelationships as part of the new vice president of data-governance position.
Supported by examples in the literature, describe the structure of the data-governance department and the polices and procedures needed to enable a smooth transition to the new system.
Identify the organization relationships of the VP for data governance with the CIO, CEO, data steward, and data managers, as well as with the IT/IS department personnel in general.
Describe the authority of the VP for data governance and how the salary for this position should be structured and determined.
Follow APA (6th edition) style and formatting guidelines, use references and citations, and create a document that is clearly written and generally free of grammatical errors.
