Power and Politics in Data Quality Improvement Efforts

Len Silverston
President
Universal Data Models, LLC

Monday 1:00pm - 4:15pm

Level: All Levels

A key to any data quality improvement effort is understanding the personal, cultural, and political environment and consciously employing proven principles to enable success. The most successful data quality improvement efforts usually share one thing in common: they developed and implemented effective strategies that provided fertile cultural and political ground for data integration and quality. This seminar will share techniques to help understand key principles and empower participants in meeting objectives and moving toward effective data quality improvement programs. It will provide case histories of successful and unsuccessful efforts, illustrating why some organizations are able to achieve higher quality data. The instructor will share principles and actions that can either help or hinder data quality and data integration efforts. The instructor will also share various insights, showing pitfalls of where data quality improvement and data integration efforts can and have gone off course. There will be interactive exercises where participants can practice handling difficult issues that commonly arise by applying principles leading to effective data quality and integration.

Participants of this session will gain:

• An understanding of political and cultural factors for which successful data quality improvement teams need to be aware and prepared
• Key issues in integrating data for higher quality data
• Tools and principles to enable data quality improvement such as keys to develop common vision, developing funding for data quality, developing trust, delivering value, managing conflict, and gaining buy in.
• Real life stories of how culture and politics either killed or fostered data integration and data quality efforts
• Case examples and exercises allowing participants to practice overcoming challenges that data professionals often face.
• Education and experience in preparing for cultural and political challenges as well as applying powerful techniques for developing more effective environments, in this non threatening, classroom setting.

Len Silverston is an author, consultant, and speaker with over 25 years of experience helping organizations integrate their information and systems. He is the best-selling author of “The Data Model Resource Book” series, which describes over 230 reusable, holistic data models and which was rated #12 on the Computer Literacy Best Seller List. Mr. Silverston has published numerous articles sharing his insights about re-usable models and how to integrate information, systems and people. He has been a columnist for Data Management Review and has been a frequently invited speaker at many international conferences. He has delivered many seminars on politics and human dynamics, providing inspirational and empowering thoughts and ideas. He is the winner of the DAMA International Professional Achievement Award for 2004 as well as the DAMA International Community Award for 2006.