THE ROLES OF THE CDO

Maria Milosavljevic sees the CDO as wearing five equally important hats:

The visionary

Gets the organisation to see the importance of data and have a long-term view of its management.

The bridge

Most companies operate in silos but data doesn’t – it needs to flow across the organisation. This is about activating data’s latent potential and is often called the democratisation of data, to ensure everybody can use it well.

The regulator

This is the one that people jump to as the default. It’s about making sure that data is designed, managed and used well. There need to be specific project KPIs around data standards and quality to make sure the data that comes out is fit for the desired outcomes. It’s the same with cybersecurity.

It all has to be baked in from the word go. The CDO’s regulator role is about setting in place the right controls to ensure that happens – for the lifetime of the data.

The scientist

This is about the art of the possible and experimentation but is at odds with the regulator hat, which is about the rules. The scientist is about breaking the rules and pushing beyond the boundaries. The CDO has to balance constraints and controlled experimentation and it’s a constant juggle.

The engineer

The focus here is scale and industrialisation. To get enduring value we have to industrialise – that’s about connecting the CDO and CIO roles. What’s proven to have value needs to become normal technology that’s embedded in our systems. It’s about applying engineering principles to create something strong, stable and enduring.