Re: DATA ADMINISTRATION

Marco,

Sounds to me that you have some PR to do. Let me inspire you with some thoughts.
Just sit back and close your eyes and think about the company your working for. Think of the different value activities within you company and/or non-value activities and linkages between those activities within your company. Having difficulty imagining the linkages? Having difficulty positioning yourself or your department within those activities? If not, good. Otherwise you are in serious trouble. Its like playing soccer. You don't win a game with a good defense. And you don't win a game with a good offense. Games are won on the midfield. It's where offense and defense are connected/linked. The ability to coordinate offense and defense is what creates an advantage. The ability to coordinate and connect value activities within a company is what creates an advantage. I hope you consider yourself a midfield player, ensuring structure, security, quality and consistency. Because that is where data administration is all about. Someone or some department should be responsible for data security, standards, data quality, data consistency, data structure. Whithout it integration/linking is not possible or at least not guaranteed. And someone or some department should do the necessary planning, organizing, executing and controlling So where is the DA-function going to? Is it outsourced. Given the fact that it is one of the potentially value-creating activities, probably not. Could be the function becomes less activity-oriented, more a consulting job. Leaving some of the operational activities to be performed by other departments. But there will always be a need for people that are knowledgable about the whole business, that are able to operate on long term (strategic) and short term (operational), accept responsibility and can make change happen. I hope you consider yourself one of them.

"Marco Aurelio Ribeiro" <macr2001_at_unisys.com.br> wrote in message news:3cffb4b6_at_news-out.americasnet.com...
> Hello,
>
> Iīve been a Data Adminsitrator for over 10 years now, and I still see some
> misconcepts about the function. All opinions will be welcome on the
> following topics:
>
> - Does the DA function have to do with the physical environment(Oracle,DB2
> or other) - I donīt think so.
> - Does the DA have to be under the development group or directly related to
> the adminstrative staff? I believe itīs on the second group
> - Is the DA function technical(related to the first question) or purely
> conceptual, once the DA is the enterpriseīs information keeper. I believe
> itīs more conceptual than any other function in IT.
>
> I thank you all in advance for sharing your ideas,
> Marco
>
>
Received on Thu Jun 06 2002 - 17:41:50 CDT