Maria C. Villar is a leader, consultant and writer in the field of enterprise information management, IT management and software development. She has held senior executive positions in both the technology and financial sector. She co-authored a book with Theresa Kushner, Managing your Business Data: From Chaos to Confidence

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Recently, eLC instructor Maria C.Villar was interviewed about data quality and why it is important to marketers. In this excerpt, used with permission, Maria discussions the distinctions between data management, governance, and quality, and the role data stewardship plays in organizations today.

How do you differentiate between data governance, data management, and data quality? Are the distinctions important?

There are various points of view on this particular topic, and I have had raging debates with some of my peers on this who think data quality is the overall program. However, I fundamentally believe that the overall program starts with establishing a comprehensive enterprise information strategy. Within that strategy, there are various capabilities that you’re trying to develop. Ultimately what you want to develop is high quality data. But in order to generate high quality data you need effective data management. So in other words, data quality is the outcome of effective data management.

Data management, to me, is a combination of processes, tools, systems, and capabilities that you build inside of a company. When you put them all together, it creates highly reliable, high quality data. data governance then is just one part of your overall Information strategy. It’s a part of your program that is about establishing standards, policy, and the oversight to make that happen.

So if you were to draw an umbrella, the overarching umbrella would be Information Management. Then within Information Management, you’ve got data governance, tools, and processes which work together to produce highly reliable, highly efficient, timely data of high quality. That’s a good way to think about it.

How do you differentiate between information management and data management? Is there really a difference?

I will not differentiate between information management and data management. Some experts will say one is of a higher order than the other. I don’t believe in that. I think they’re one in the same. Most people who are not immersed in it don’t know the difference either. If you ask a businessperson, “Is it data management or information management?” they’ll look at you like, “What are you even talking about? Why are we spending time on that topic?” It’s not a relevant topic for them.

What about data stewardship? What role does it play in the organization?

That’s really a good question. So data stewardship is under the category called ‘data governance.’ It’s really one of the key roles in a data governance program to drive accountability for data. So a data steward will be charged with some data topic. It could be a data steward for customer data. It could be a data steward for vendor data.

Then that person is charged with driving all of the programs that need to be driven in order to produce high quality customer-vendor data. So if there are processes or systems that need to change, they would define the standards, to follow. For example: What are the mandatory fields? Or, what are the data quality criteria? A data steward is really the point person for that data topic in the company. It’s one of the best practice methods in our industry for establishing accountability for data in your company.

Nothing happens if you don’t appoint somebody. That’s why a lot of times the chief data officer roles have governance under their umbrella. They assign these other responsibilities because someone needs to make it happen. That’s what the chief data officer does and that’s what the data steward does. They don’t do all the work, but they’re the lead people in charge that may build up the team and then get the work done across the company.

The full interview, titled What is Data Quality and Why Should Marketers Care, originally appeared on the blog of Synthesis Technology.

Learn More from Maria

Course: Data Governance Fundamentals

Course: Data Stewardship Core

Course: Data Governance for Data Stewards

Certified Data Steward

The mission of the Certified Data Steward (CDS) Program is to formalize the role of data stewardship and to drive recognition of Data Steward as a professional designation.