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How do you get budget for data governance as a CDO?

You get budget not by giving advice, but by taking on delivery for something that is already a priority. Find the initiative the organisation cares about, show which data needs to be arranged for it to succeed, and take responsibility for delivering that. Because the initiative was already a priority, the budget is there. Data governance then travels along with that initiative.

In episode 21 of Databewuster I spoke with Marco Hoppenbrouwer, Chief Data & AI Officer at Stedin, about a question almost every data leader runs into sooner or later: how do you get budget for data when nobody is asking for it? Marco spent almost 33 years at Shell, from the mail room to Chief Data Officer, and his answer is remarkably practical.

Everything is important, but not equally important

Marco always starts the data journey with the priority of the organisation. At Shell he reached out to the trusted adviser of an executive vice president in HR or Finance to learn what the real top priorities were. Then came the conversation with the responsible VP: what have you arranged for data?

The first answer was often that it did not matter, or that it was already handled. His example was a large outsourcing deal for work that used to be done in house. In five or ten years that contract ends. Which data is yours? Which data is produced during the contract, and in what quality do you get it back? Asked at that level, it often turned out nobody had really thought it through.

From advising to delivering

This is where Marco describes the turning point: you move from an advisory role to a delivery role. You do not point out what is wrong. You say it is not set up well, that you will sort it out, and that you need the VP’s support and some extra capacity to do so. Because the initiative was already a priority, that is not a problem. That is where the budget is.

The business case is concrete: no supplier lock-in, and access to your own data for the full term of the contract. A VP understands that without anyone having to say the words data governance.

Governance carried by existing initiatives

While solving that one problem, you also settle data ownership and agree on the master sources to use. Marco describes a data toolkit that you deploy on the back of initiatives that are already running. Each time you add a piece of the data puzzle, until the organisation can do it on its own: roles are assigned, and people know how to clean up data, archive it and measure its quality. First you show them, then you do it together, then they do it themselves.

That fits his view of the role itself. According to Marco, the CDO is a transition role that should eventually become unnecessary once the business can manage its own data agenda.

Nobody is waiting for head office

His advice to new CDOs was clear. Start with the business outcome, work out what is needed from data for an initiative to land, and take delivery accountability for it, even when it is formally not your responsibility. Nobody is waiting for someone from head office explaining how wonderful the world could be with data and what everyone is doing wrong. Help people succeed instead, and nobody will ask what the CDO actually delivers.

And data quality?

Marco added one more point. Data is the result of how a process is carried out. When people deviate from the work process, the data quality suffers by definition, so the root cause of data quality problems almost always sits in the process.

Based on episode 21 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.