WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?

WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?

By W H Inmon

Just recently I attended an Internet presentation focused on data management and data governance. My friend Marilu Lopez was announcing and initiating her new book on the subject.

The meeting was most interesting and had a lot of very smart people in attendance. It was a pleasure.

But something odd struck me about the meeting. At the beginning of the meeting a lot of people said hello to the other attendees by way of chat. This was a nice start. And as part of their introduction many of them described where they were living today.

And it was almost shocking. The VAST majority of the people interested in data management and governance were from outside the US.

I wrote down the countries in attendance that I saw – Argentina, Australia, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, India, Mexico, Nigeria, Panama, Peru, Spain, and Venezuela.

The locations from the US that were in attendance were Atlanta, Hawaii, Los Angeles, and Nebraska.

Now it is simply a statement of fact that there is far more interest in data management and governance in the world than there is in the US. But how are we to interpret this fact?

One interpretation is that the world is alerted to the value of good data management and data governance. And that is good news for the data management community around the world.

But the bad news is that the US is asleep. Maybe COVID put the US to sleep. Maybe outsourcing did. Maybe years of clumsy and incompetent management of IT put the US to sleep.

I don’t know why the US does not pay attention to data management and data governance. I just know that they have abandoned the data management ship. This is not an opinion – this is an observable fact.

Not everyone signed in with where they were coming from so maybe I missed a few. But there were no people that I could see from –

??? New York City

?? Boston

?? Chicago

?? Dallas

?? San Francisco

?? St Louis

?? Etc

So what the heck is going on? Has the US lost all of its initiative when it comes to data management?

Can someone explain this to me?

(On a side note, if you are interested in the new book on data management and data governance by Marilu Lopez, I recommend you take a look.)

Bill Inmon lives in Denver with his wife and his two Scotty dogs – Jeb and Lena. The leaves are just starting to turn and Jeb and Lena like that, because when they go for their daily walk the pavement is neither too hot nor too cold. Just right for Scotty dogs.

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