Event spotlight: the 2019 DGIQ Conference

We at EDQ kicked off June by attending the Data Governance and Information Quality (DGIQ) Conference in sunny San Diego, California. This event was produced by Debt Tech International and Dataversity.

The DGIQ Conference examines the latest trends and practices leaders in the data space use and how they apply strategies around data governance and data quality. The conference focused heavily on the emergence of data governance and regulatory issues that companies face regarding their own data. Organizations also must understand the integrity and quality of their customer data moving forward to help drive the bottom line.

For me, the top three takeaways from the DGIQ conference were that:

1. Many companies are just scratching the surface of data governance and data quality strategy. Many of the attendees wanted to understand how other companies who are further along in the cycle started and where they were headed. The underlying theme was that the start of a good data governance strategy is having good data quality.

2. Establishing data standards has become an increasingly important topic in the data world. Companies and individuals have been maintaining these standards through monitoring and keeping data quality over certain thresholds. Several companies shared a common practice of profiling data and writing rules to ensure that quality remains above the company’s standards. There are platforms in the works that will help these processes, and they will be automated to notify individuals when the quality of data decreases below their allotted thresholds.

3. My third takeaway from the conference is that companies are starting to take data way more seriously than they used to. After attending several conferences recently, I’ve noticed the increasing emergence of positions like Chief Data Officers and data stewards, and that many companies are creating their own data quality divisions. This was especially noticeable at DGIQ. After speaking with these companies about the importance of data and establishing plans for governance and quality, I’m more confident about partnering with them to improve their data and help make their lives easier.

We enjoyed our time in San Diego meeting new faces and seeing some old ones from last year. We look forward to coming back next year and learning about how companies have helped implement some of the takeaways from DGIQ this year!