Consider Managed Governance Services

Managed Service Providers (MSP) are an outsourced arrangement to a third-party company where they manage and assume responsibility for a specific activity. Managed services are very common in the world of information technology, payroll, workforce management, human resources, and vendor management. Such arrangements enable companies to take full advantage of the latest industry expertise at a fraction of the cost of fully-loaded staff equivalents. Mitigating data risk has become a board-level priority. Company executives should consider Managed Governance Services as a solution.

Buried inside every company is the knowledge required to solve the mystery on the true sources and use of data. The recent MetaGovernance blog, “Knowing What Lies Beneath,” generated considerable interest among practitioners of data risk management and financial reporting. The tragedy of the Titanic points out the need to see below the water line. It is a perfect analogy to the serious problem companies face when bad data, hidden from view, is the source material for financial reports to stakeholders and regulatory authorities.

The COO of a large bank recently shared his frustration with his company’s attempts to mitigate data risks. They had worked with a number of different Data Governance consultants. The effort produced new policies and procedures. The bank was also given a huge spreadsheet showing the governance links between departments and data, i.e. who owned what data. Understanding these links is critical in my view. However, it turns out that this was simply another costly knowledge project: informative but not action-oriented to achieve the desired level of data integrity.

The COO had correctly acknowledged the need to determine the governance relationships between data and the different businesses. But for a number of reasons it became difficult to prioritize resources to complete the job. This was a missed opportunity as they “stopped short of the goal line.”

I explained the MetaGovernance approach which maps the links between business units and their data. Instead of a static map, we drive organizational awareness among Data Owners and Data Consumers by facilitating discussions on data and the targeted notifications of data quality controls based on governance business rules that change with the business needs.

We offer Managed Governance Services to firms that want to effectively administer the governance business rules (metadata) for both structured and unstructured data. Awareness is the cornerstone of organizational maturity on the governance front. Our Awareness Matrix has an embedded dynamic process tying together projects, risk management, and other business initiatives.

We begin with a diagnostic assessment of a company’s current state of Data Governance, Information Governance, Data Risk Governance, or Compliance Governance. Importantly, this is performed in the context of regulatory requirements. We assimilate all existing policies, charters, procedures and business rules around ownership and stewardship. Feedback is provided based on industry-specific knowledge. With deep domain experience with Government Sponsored Entities (GSEs) we rapidly determine the source, use, ownership and needed data quality parameters. Our experience extends to the Capital Markets, Banking and Healthcare sectors. As implementation is key, we include an InfoGov application at no additional cost for the ongoing maintenance of metadata and awareness that permanently raises the level of corporate dialogue on data source, use and risk.

MetaGovernance is driven to produce solid results for clients quickly and cost-effectively. We do that by combining our considerable experience in the (data) trenches with a patented technology that delivers accurate data and confidence that what gets reported to stakeholders and regulatory authorities is sound.