Crazy Consulting Baloney: Ambient Data Governance

April 13, 2019

I spotted this phrase in the capitalist’s tool. That would be Forbes Magazine, an outfit which publishes some pretty crazy management recipes. Navigate to “How To Prepare Your Company For Ambient Data Governance.” Click thorough the ads and the pop ups. The reward is a write up about “ambient data governance.” I must admit that I don’t have a clue why this phrase is necessary. Governance by itself is a limp noodle. What company has governance today? Wells Fargo, Facebook, or another one might wish to nominate? You pick. Management of most companies takes short cuts; for example, killing products after announcing them and putting the name of the product in advertisements (a nifty play at Apple, a company with governance one presumes).

Here’s a passage I noted:

Forrester recently issued a prediction for 2019, saying, “Ambient data governance will take the trauma out of old-school governance,” and predicting that “ambient data governance will prevail as a strategy to automate and intelligently scale data policy deployment while learning and adapting policies based on data consumer interaction.”

Okay, Forrester. Selling reports and consulting or is it consulting which yields reports? I just don’t know.

What does one do to become adept at “ambient data governance”? Easy. How about these astounding recommendations:

Appoint a chief data officer. Make sure this person can walk. This is the “ambient” I deduce.

Become data literate. Okay, what’s data? What’s literate mean in this context?

Evolve to an insights driven organization. Yeah, anyone at Forbes read Darwin? Intent-driven evolution is an interesting concept. The method does not work too well.

There you go. A recipe for governance. More like a recipe to write an article in the capitalist tool and hook a crazy buzzword to Forrester. SEO at work. Rev your Harley’s engine, Malcolm. Speed away from this management jargon accident.

Stephen E Arnold, April 13, 2019

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