As technology evolves, many things change including the roles of the information professionals. Search Data Management brought this topic to us in their article, “The evolving role of the chief data officer.”

The chief data officer is a senior executive responsible for the utilization and governance of data across the organization. Early on, when most chief data officers were in large financial institutions, their most common roles were defense-oriented, involving the security, privacy, quality and regulatory compliance of key data. These days the job of the chief data officer is expanding to be more strategic as the need for organizations to connect and make sense of massive volumes of data continues to grow.

In the past, chief data officers were mostly focused on data governance and compliance. Now they are also responsible for helping organizations use data to improve business operations. Organizations are still grouping data management responsibilities with general IT operations, even if that doesn’t produce good results.

Melody K. Smith

Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.