We’re proud to have participated at the MIT Chief Data Officer and Information Quality Symposium (MIT CDOIQ) in late-July, and were glad to have met CVS Health, NY Department of State, Amazon, Hanover Insurance, and many more at our session!
As part of the discussions around data management and leadership during this 3-day symposium, we were able to better understand the current challenges and opportunities facing Chief Data Officers (CDOs) in driving data sharing within their organizations.
Here are our three key takeaways from the symposium.
1. CDOs highlighted data sharing as their #1 priority
While data quality and return on investment (ROI) are important considerations for CDOs, overemphasis on the quality of data could actually reduce the data’s value. Instead, CDOs should focus on business KPIs such as data monetization and customer experience, and most importantly, data sharing.
With data sharing, CDOs can build more robust analytics and unlock greater value from data, and thus have greater involvement and impact in the business.
CDOs who were able to promote data sharing were found to be 1.7 times more effective at demonstrating value to their stakeholders, as shared by Gartner during their session at the symposium.
2. Multiple barriers to data sharing still exist
No longer is technology the main obstacle to sharing data, CDOs are now facing other barriers such as data privacy and security, legal hurdles, and stakeholder buy-in. For some, the biggest challenge has been a cultural one.
To overcome these barriers, CDOs would first need to think about the specific challenges their organization are facing and conduct an internal diagnosis of these obstacles, before they can formulate the right strategy.
Some suggestions shared touched upon positive change management and fostering a culture that embraces data sharing. CDOs could start this process by helping staff appreciate the difficulty of generating valuable insights without data sharing.
When making any decision around data sharing, the use-case and its potential benefits for the organization should be the main deciding factors for CDOs.
CDOs should highlight use-cases that best address the organization’s most pressing challenges to promote data sharing among their staff.
After gaining real business value from data sharing in the initial stages, staff would naturally be more excited over the potential of sharing data. CDOs could keep this momentum going by sharing successful case studies and use-cases of data sharing with their organization.
3. Organizations could adopt a counterintuitive thinking around data sharing
The risks of sharing data, such as potential data misuse, is well-known. However, organizations that embrace data collaboration can generate greater value based on pre-agreed upon outcomes.
Current discussions around the risk of data collaboration could be shifted to the potential risks associated with not collaborating on valuable data, such as suffering from a lack of robust data analysis or losing competitive advantage in the market.
Instead of looking at data as a potential liability, data should be viewed as a true asset that allows organizations to monetize or generate actionable intelligence safely, which we believe can be done with confidential computing technology that guarantees privacy and security of all sensitive data.
Our CEO and Co-Founder Maximilian Groth spoke more about this with former National Security Agency (NSA) Senior Executive Richard C. Schaeffer, Jr., which you can re-watch below!
Session with former NSA Senior Executive Richard C. Schaeffer, Jr.
How to get back the $300B worth of data left untapped each year
We’re excited about the applications of data sharing for different industries and we look forward to furthering these discussions at future events!
If you would like to find out how your organization can securely collaborate on sensitive and restricted data, reach out to us for a quick discussion.