The Data Masterclass – The CDO Podcast Series

You must have read many times that ‘Data is the New Oil’. In today’s fast paced digitally driven world, data is truly ‘fueling’ the growth of businesses and economies world-wide through intelligent analytics. However, what most of us forget is the fact that just like oil, data has to be refined to give accurate, measurable, trustworthy & reliable outcomes. Apart from losing faith of customers, dealing with an enterprise-wide poor data quality & security can also be very cost intensive. Moreover, while handling data, non-compliance to stringent data privacy & security laws like GDPR – EU, CCPA – California, US and The Personal Data Protection Bill – India (proposed) may also attract heavy penalties and fines. Hence, the quality, privacy and security of data are three factors that are of prime importance, thankfully, they can be achieved and maintained through various data governance programs. To give you a round up on the ongoing data landscape, we bring you ‘The Data Masterclass – a Series of 4 Podcasts’ from our inhouse Data & Analytics expert Dr. Fernando Velez, Chief Data Technologist at Persistent Systems. So, if you are keen on improving data quality & data privacy for your enterprise or learning more about it, do not miss this series of Podcasts.

#1 CDO Podcast

How to Successfully Build a Business Case to Improve Data Quality in Your Organization

In the first podcast, we will discuss how data operations and data quality can impact the value you derive out of your data. In this episode, we will also explain how you can build a business case to improve data quality.

What is the Need for Improving Data Quality?

• Data quality is one of the main drivers of an organization’s data strategy. To become a data-driven organization in the digital economy, organizations must be able to ‘trust’ their data.
• However, evidence from recent studies shows that the quality of the vast majority of data is simply unacceptable. Unless you have hard evidence to believe the contrary, you should at least suspect that your data may have a quality problem.
• Direct business costs of such lack of quality are enormous. Several analysts and market players place it between 15% to 25% of revenue of a typical organization. Indirect costs such as angry customers and erroneous decisions resulting from bad data are unmeasurable and may also be very high.

This Video will Help you Understand:

• How to Measure Data Quality – You’ll learn about a simple method that every manager whose job depends on data can use to measure the quality of data they use, for their everyday work. This method is one of the many measurements that shows that data quality is actually in worse shape than what most managers realize.
• What are the Common Reasons for Bad Data Quality – Most causes of bad data quality are internal matters! At the heart of it, the main reason organizations struggle with data quality is because it is ‘nobody’s problem’.
• Some Methods to Improve Data Quality – Discover some practical steps on how to make a business case for improving data quality by adopting a proactive approach involving the business, as opposed to a reactive approach involving just IT.

#2 CDO Podcast

How Organizations can Address Data Quality Problems Through a Data Governance Program

In the second episode, we will discuss how organizations can improve enterprise-wide data quality through an executive-level data governance committee that directly manages data stewardship. We will cover various ways to address data quality problems and ensure accountability for data quality.

A Successful Data Governance Program

• To make sure that an organization’s data quality initiative is sustainable, it is strongly suggested that it has to be folded into a data governance program that defines roles for people accountable for data quality.
• A critical success factor for a Data Governance program is to show value explicitly. This has to be done by determining the KPIs to measure how the data quality improves and how the business improves accordingly. Automate KPIs so that you can measure them continuously.
• Increasingly, organizations are relying on data created by others, and it is hard to establish tight governance around quality. However, intelligent technology can help, especially when dealing with hundreds of high-variety feeds.

 This Video will Help you Understand:

• The Most Common Data Quality Problems – How organizations can deal effectively with the three most common sources of data quality problems in a data governance program.
• Data Owner Accountability – What are the benefits of empowering data owners and holding them accountable for data quality to influence people’s behaviors, changing the processes, and getting the right technology support.
• The Technology Side – Find out about the technology landscape supporting Data Governance processes.

#3 CDO Podcast

Evolution of Privacy Through History to Better Understand Today’s Challenges, Impact of Regulations on Data Privacy and on the Fight against the Covid-19 Pandemic

 Privacy is a fairly modern concept. Did you know that the US Supreme Court recognized privacy as a constitutional right only in 1965? In this third episode, we will discuss the evolution of privacy through history to better understand today’s challenges. We will also shed light on the impact of regulations on important matters such as the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic.

Impact of Regulations on Data Privacy

• Privacy is a recent and modern concept associated with the Western culture. Through a brief historical perspective, we have shown privacy’s close relationship with two forces; creation of wealth and creation of technology.
• Since the early 2000s there is an emergence of new business models based on prediction of consumer behavior that challenge privacy, causing an unprecedented raise in data breaches and a subsequent erosion of consumer trust in businesses.
• Privacy laws such as GDPR are forcing businesses into protecting sensitive consumer data and respecting privacy.

This Video will Help you Understand:

• The Role of Consumers – Where consumers stand in the tension between personalization and privacy.
• The Risk Landscape – How businesses, when managing personal data, are having to consider these two forces (creation of wealth & creation of technology) at play with a risk management and risk mitigation mindset.
• The Impact of Covid-19 Pandemic – Learn about the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on privacy legislations.

 #4 CDO Podcast

How Organizations can Comply to Privacy Laws, while Retaining the Utility of their Customer Data and Extracting such Utility with Speed

As a business, you need to comply with data privacy laws and uphold trust with your hard-earned customers. But at the same time, there is a need to utilize this data for the growth of the business – whether it’s a matter of using transaction data for personalizing offers or more critical demands such as using clinical trial data for drug research. In this video we will discuss how businesses can maintain the delicate balance of privacy, utility, and speed in a data-driven world.

Data Management and Data Governance for Meeting Privacy Compliance Obligations

• Data privacy builds on top of data and data infrastructure security: there is no privacy without security.
• Data privacy requirements vary from one initiative to the other, so their implementation needs to be flexible, require the understanding of the legislation, as well as a comprehensive understanding of privacy risks in each case.
• Data Governance principles and processes not only apply to data quality, but also to data privacy and security. With the expanded definition of what constitutes personal information in laws such as GDPR, ownership, control and management of personal data is an ever-expanding endeavor that needs coordinated governance policies for both quality and privacy.

This Video will Help you Understand:

• How to Manage Personal Data – How businesses are managing personal data with privacy, utility, and speed (i.e., respecting privacy, exploiting some of its utility, and doing so in a timely manner).
• Issues Faced by Organizations – Increase your awareness of the key challenges faced by organizations in the management of personal data with this privacy/utility/speed risk governance mindset.
• The Importance of Security Automation – Find out how today, thanks to security automation, the average total cost of a data breach is actually decreasing (even though the number of breaches has skyrocketed in the last few years).

In this Data Masterclass, Dr. Fernando Velez leverages his expertise in the subject of data analytics to cover all the critical aspects like data quality, data privacy, data security, data governance & the legislations that are relevant for enterprises all over the world. At Persistent Data & Analytics Lab, we have an expertise in customized governance solutions that are deployable enterprise-wide for improving Data quality, Data privacy & security and accuracy of ML model predictions. If you want to implement these solutions for your business or want to know more about our Data & Analytics’ offerings, please reach out to us.