Financial firms now have a quantifiable way to measure just how well they manage their data.

The Enterprise Data Management Council, the trade group promoting enterprise wide data management on Wall Street, and Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute (SEI) have just released a data management maturity model based on Carnegie Mellon's capability maturity model integration (CMMI) principles used in software engineering. The SEI is a federally funded research and development center sponsored by the US Department of Defense and operated by Carnegie Mellon University. With initial funding provided by consultancy Booz Allen Hamilton, the EDM Council and SEI will create a program to train and certify appraisers of data management capabilities. 

The model defines the components of data management so that firms can compare themselves against documented best practices. Such a model, says the EDM Council will define the requirements for development data management strategy; implementing governance; managing data operations; improving data quality; and integrating data effectively into business processes.  A copy of the full report explaining the model was unavailable by press time. 

For larger financial firms -- particularly banks --now involved in large data management projects the maturity model will provide a means to measure their progress by defined goals. Such a way allows them to make change more easily and quickly as the project proceeds. During the financial crisis, financial firms quickly realized they could not accurately calculate their market; counterparty and liquidity risk because they couldn't find the necessary data to make the correct calculations and disclosures.

"The old adage of you cant manage what you can't measure is also true for data," says Michael Atkin, managing director of the EDM Council. The data management model not only provides organizations with a definition of the what and why of managing data as meaningful content, it provides a standardized and consistent mechanism for measuring data management capabilities against both business objective and oversight requirements."

Written by Chris Kentouris, Editor-in-chief (Chris can be contacted through Chris.Kentouris@hotmail.com)

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