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Sunil looks at industries where information governance and Big Data are beginning to converge

Information governance is the formulation of policy to optimize, secure, and leverage information as an enterprise asset by aligning the objectives of multiple functions. Big Data is a platform for bringing together enormous volumes of data, from any source, at any velocity, to generate breakthrough insights.

Companies are starting to recognize the importance of establishing the appropriate governance over their Big Data initiatives. I list a few industry-specific examples below:

Consumer Products

Several consumer products companies are starting to leverage Big Data to analyze vast quantities of social media to gain consumer insight. From an information governance perspective, marketing needs to understand the copyright issues associated with content in the public domain. Some web sites prohibit large-scale crawling of content, while others say that the bloggers own the copyright even if the content has been aggregated.

Marketing also needs to work closely with the privacy and compliance departments to draw the line on the types of offers that can be generated from social media analytics. It is one thing to establish macro-level sentiment analysis about a new product. However, if marketing uses social media to establish individual offers, that might very well cross the line.

Utilities

Several North American utilities are considering Big Data programs to analyze vast quantities of smart meter data. (I blogged about smart meters recently.) The information governance program needs to set policies around data archiving to avoid runaway storage costs from the explosion of data from smart meters. The information governance also needs to set policies to monitor access to sensitive meter data that can reveal customers’ electricity usage patterns.

Retail

Retailers need to establish the appropriate policies around data definitions within their Big Data platforms. For example, a large retailer with multiple divisions might need to establish multiple definitions for the term “household,” such as:

• Automobile services – Household might refer to all the cars in the same garage. The automobile services division might not care if the household has college kids who own cars that are garaged in another part of the country.
• Credit cards – Household might refer to everyone who is financially responsible for credit cards including joint signatories.
• Appliances – Household might refer to everyone who lives under the same roof.

Oil and Gas

Oil and gas companies have Big Data initiatives to analyze geospatial and seismic data to discover new energy reserves and to extend the life of existing reservoirs. However, oil and gas companies need to ensure that this data is of the appropriate quality. For example, an oil company bought the same seismic data twice from an external vendor because of inconsistent naming conventions in its internal repositories. (See my recent blog for a more thorough discussion of this industry’s information governance challenges.)

Healthcare

A health insurer was leveraging text analytics within its Big Data platform to discern from physicians’ notes if a patient had received a flu shot. By improving the percentage of flu shots within the Medicare population, the health insurer wanted to increase incentive payments from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The information governance program wanted to use this information to enrich the health and wellness attributes within the master data management system.

Many of the concepts in this blog are from my forthcoming book Selling Information Governance to the Business: Best Practices by Industry and Job Function that will be published at the IBM Information On Demand Conference in Las Vegas next week. I’ll be presenting a few sessions, or you can view the entire Information Governance track agenda:

IIG-3888: Ask the Experts: Implementing Information Governance Best Practices within an Organization – Monday, 10:15 AM – 11:15 AM, Reef B

4109: Book Signing: Selling Information Governance to the Business: Best Practices by Industry & Job Function – Monday, 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM, IOD Bookstore, Bayside Foyer, Level 1

IIG-3401: Selling Information Governance to the Business: Best Practices by Industry and Job Function – Tuesday, 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM, Pacific G

IIG-3400: Data Governance at SunTrust – Tuesday, 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM, South Pacific G

IIG-3501: Making an Information Governance Assessment Actionable at BCBS of TN – speaking with IBM Champion for Business Analytics Frank Brooks – Wednesday, 11:30 AM – 12:30 PM, South Pacific G

IIG-3500: Case Study: Implementing Metrics-Driven Data Governance – Wednesday, 3:15 PM – 4:15 PM, South Pacific G

I’ll also be at one of the Birds of a Feather tables, sharing “Examples of the IBM Information Governance Unified Process” (IIG-3884) on Monday from 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM in the Bayside Dining area.

I hope to see you at IOD next week in Las Vegas.