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How do you use a standards framework as architecture for data quality?

By treating the framework as the structure rather than as a checklist. Nico Kohlberg and René Wiertz describe how a standards framework combined with the Metro model can anchor data quality in the way an organisation works, so that it survives after the project that introduced it has ended.

The central question in this conversation: how do you use a standards framework and the Metro model not only to improve data quality, but to anchor it in the culture of the organisation?

From factsheet to foundation

The framework starts life as a document and only becomes useful when it is treated as architecture: something other work hangs off, rather than something that gets checked once a year. That shift is what separates a framework people use from one they can find.

What anchoring requires

• The framework has to answer questions people actually have, or it is not consulted
• Standards need an owner who can decide an edge case
• The link to daily work must be short: a rule three clicks away is a rule nobody applies

Why the Metro model helps here

It places each standard at a level. A norm that belongs at the operational level and is discussed only at board level does not get carried out, and one that belongs at the strategic level but is decided by a team does not carry authority. Matching the level to the measure is most of the work.

Based on an episode of the Databewuster podcast, recorded in Dutch. The episode, the summary and the full transcript are on the podcast page. This English article describes what was discussed; it does not quote the guest directly, because the conversation was in Dutch.