The biggest challenge to the fourth industrial revolution that will put artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and big data centre stage is a lack of widely agreed information standards caused by obsession with technology rather than information.
Hany Choueiri, head of data governance and strategy, EMEA, at State Street, discussed the need for capital markets to look beyond today, innovate and develop information standards that will provide complete information auditability during a keynote presentation at A-Team Group’s Data Management Summit in London last week.
He said: “People are too busy with regulation, they need to pause and think about the future. People spend 70% of their time thinking about today, 20% about tomorrow and 10% about the day after that. We need to study innovation and deliver data by design.”
Citing the first industrial revolution introducing mechanical steam machines, the second electrical power, the third computers and the fourth AI, robotics and big data, Choueiri forecast that the latest revolution will cause huge disruption at an increased pace. He suggested chief data officers (CDOs) will be joined by chief digital officers, data will be recognised as a critical asset and information standards will be needed, despite many financial firms viewing them as a threat rather than an opportunity.
Information standards could represent packages of information containing rich meta data for data sources, origins and transformations applied to the data. There would be restrictions on how the packages are used, with rules governing whether data can be used but not altered or repackaged if it is altered.
Choueiri said information standards need to be driven by industry convergence and are about 10 years away, but noted that they could cut down today’s data management challenges including the need to manage huge volumes of data, navigate different vendor tools and technology stacks, and discover unstructured data.
He concluded: “The first word represented by IT has been largely forgotten. We need cultural change. When information is designed correctly, technology becomes easy.”
If you missed A-Team’s London Data Management Summit, you can catch up on all that’s new in data management and listen to speakers including Inderpal Bhandari, global CDO at IBM; Peter Serenita, group CDO at HSBC; David Saul, senior vice president and chief scientist at State Street; and Michael Vapenik, data governance officer at American Express at our next Data Management Summit in New York City on 4th April 2017.
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