My favourite talk on day 1 of the MIT IQIS was the keynote presentation from Ron Bechtold, Chief Data Officer for the US Army. “The single biggest problem the Army has is creating a single identity for individuals and assets,” said Bechtold. He also explained how a soldier’s identity can change depending on his or her current posting, with different identity data such as email addresses and phone number.

Bechtold admitted that the Army had struggled with data ownership; different people wanted to own the same data for their own use. The solution cam when Bechtold realised that none of them should own it – instead all US Army data is now owned by the Secretary of the Army and everyone else has stewardship of the data and answerable to the Secretary. In my opinion, this is the only way to answer the data ownership question.

It was suggested by the audience that the Army had an advantage here, in that soldiers were trained and disciplined to accept and act on orders. Bechtold’s answer to this surprised some; “you can’t order people to do anything,” he said, “you can only create the environment and expectation and hope.”

When it comes to technology, Bechtold doesn’t hold any punches; he firmly believes that technology is only there to support the business process. “IT only provides the plumbing,” says Bechtold. He is equally forthright about data management tools; “at the end of the day, a fool with a tool is still a fool,” he says, I don’t care about tools, I don’t care about companies; I care about solving problems.” Bechtold’s message is clear – data management has to be driven by the business, rather than the other way around.

But how should you get started with data management and data quality? Bechtold is typically brash in his response to this question, “start with a burning bridge,” he says, “if necessary create one!” In his view, you need to be justify a data management by solving a critical business issue and that may mean fanning the flames of a known problem to reveal its true impact.