Carol Newcomb has 25 years of experience in information management, particularly in the healthcare industry. She specializes in the design and implementation of data governance programs. Carol has worked with the Department of Education to design a long range data strategy and has designed data stewardship and broad organizational training materials to ensure ongoing program success. Prior to SAS, she held positions at The Joint Commission, Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Henry Ford Health System, and UHC. She is the author of the SAS E-book “When Bad Data Happens to Good Companies” and has written numerous blogs and white papers, including “Implementing Data Governance in Complex Healthcare Organizations.”
What is it about change that seems so difficult? Even if we are considered a flexible, creative or adventurous person, a first reaction is often to push back at change imperatives forced upon us by others. Part of this is probably a sign of the times. Self-determination is something that
In a previous blog, I wrote about the top ten fallacies of why data governance is perceived to be too burdensome and costly. Hopefully I dispelled the preconception that data governance is slower and less nimble than today's informal data management practices. In this post, we'll examine the concept of governance
One of the biggest impediments to (and failures of) a new data governance program is the perceived level of “extras” required. Let’s enumerate some of the concerns that I hear consistently from our clients: Extra people will be required to staff the implementation. Extra budget money will be needed to fund the
The third part of my data governance primer series addresses data quality analysis. Don’t even start a data quality analysis until you have completed the first two steps of your root cause analysis: investigate and prioritize any potential causative factors, then start your metadata assessment. Otherwise, you may be misled
The second part of my data governance primer series addresses ways to "mind your metadata." I can just hear the collective groans, and perhaps a stifled yawn. Sorry, but metadata collection is one of those necessary evils that may not be fun, but having it available as a resource to
They say that data governance is about people, process and organization. Much of the work required in planning for data governance is in defining people’s roles and responsibilities, and then designing the organizational structure that will provide authority for decisions to be made and enforced.
Each year during springtime in the Midwest, we long-suffering residents slowly disentangle ourselves from the grips of Old Man Winter – one twisted finger at a time. Like clockwork, with spring comes hopes of golf, and dreams of that par game I was never able to put together last summer. So (ever hopeful) I visited a golf
Who said you can’t mandate data governance? Who says it has to be some smarmy, politically correct, incremental pitter-patter of a tiptoe into the bomb-laden lion’s den of IT super-forces? How come so many other rules are blindly followed, up and down the corporate ladder? The police have rules, don’t
