Data Governance Can Create “Data Trusts” for Consumers in Organizations

In the past few months, Firms have accelerated digital transformation across multiple journeys of on-boarding and servicing customers. This has been possible by integrating and aggregating Multi-sources as well as taming the ‘Data Swamps’ to deliver quality data. Platform Governance is the mantra to a healthy delivery of Big-Data and native data platforms.

It is not only the culture of managing data that will require a change but also the culture of curating data from customers. This in-fact is evolving with conversations around the importance of data protection in India and legislations like GDPR, DFIC protection law.

However, minimizing data collection in the first handshake with a customer, to fulfill a contract and legal obligations while maintaining Data Quality builds trust in every customer interaction. People get to visualize firms as custodians of their private data.

A recent experience led to me precisely define data-trust. Further, as the relationship with the firm matures, customers provide additional information, willingly – which in-fact is called zero-copy data. Such Zero-copy data that is provided to organizations as they are fiduciary stewards assists people in receiving better services.

Quoting an experience – I was not able to login to my investment management service on a website – as my email and phone number associated with the fund, is no longer accurate and I am not able to reset them, while I still invest into them every month.

Harmonizing data privacy and data sharing can bolster innovation in the business ecosystems while un-locking the economic value of data. The first step for any start-up or a well-established organization is to build a controlled environment that can well govern and manage data. This activity will further cascade trust in the internal data hosted by various functions like marketing and create a culture of sharing for "digital-centricity".

As Data Governance is known to have a cascading positive impact on Corporate Governance, at the same time, people outside the organization start trusting the organization on as stewards of their data. A well-matured organization can be called a ‘data trust’ where the control of data is held by its customers. Though organizations are either controllers or processors of data – the group can be viewed as having an ethical element in having a fiduciary duty to maintaining the integrity of people’s data.

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