IT teams in most Life Science organizations have an unending To-Do list of projects to tackle. Their hands are full with various initiatives to support growth mandates while adjusting and keeping up with constant change in this highly competitive, fast-paced industry. While maintaining an eye on industry trends is necessary, fundamental IT work remains. This is the keep-the-lights-on type of work that falls under the not so sexy, but very important category of “data governance.”
Keeping IT’s Head Above Governance Waters. . .
For IT teams struggling with growth initiatives, mounting and ever-changing regulations cannot be ignored. Data privacy, security and compliance must still be assured. Protection from potential data breach is critical and efforts to ensure proper data audit trails, unquestioning data integrity, and effective data lifecycle management are ongoing.
This includes the sorting and classification of all your dark data with proper controls, where needed. This includes unstructured or semi-structured data still lurking about in your company’s file shares, SharePoint servers and email system.
How can IT achieve the right balance between its long list of growth and data governance projects? And, how far is far enough when it comes to governance?
We don’t presume to have all the answers. But, our experience with Life Science organizations gives us some perspective as well as a few, proven governance rules-of-thumb to help keep your IT team sane.
“How far is far enough when it comes to governance?”
4 Ways for IT to Survive and Thrive in a Governance World
At Daymark, we looked at some of the governance issues affecting our Life Science clients and developed a results-oriented, 4-phase IT action plan. We’ve condensed these insights into a whitepaper that’s full of references we’re sure your IT team will find valuable.
It may sound simple, but we believe that following these four rules-of-thumb can give your IT team new clarity, renewed focus and some solid, early wins along the way.
Here’s a small taste of the four steps IT can take to survive, and thrive, its organization’s governance initiatives:
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Identify Your Maturity Level. This stage involves gaining a bellwether of your organization’s current governance maturity levels. Not an easy task, mind you, but Daymark expertise can help your IT team see its own progress across a spectrum of areas. Effective tools to assist in the process might include the use of assessment software or data loss prevention (DLP) software. (One IT Operations lead at a Pharmaceutical company went through a similar process and discovered over 85% of the company data hadn’t been touched in 2 years!)
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Prioritize Outcomes. This second step involves sorting out a few short-term and long-range data governance goals. The focus here is on early wins that IT can achieve while more complex, corporate-wide governance issues are being addressed.
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Get an “Assist” from Technology. There are certain characteristics of software and enterprise platforms we look for when it comes to making IT governance tasks easier and more effective. Solutions with time-tested automation and integration are part of our overall criteria. We also address any potential technology gaps in your IT efforts and recommend how best to close them.
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Early Projects, Rapid Results. We identify several governance-related projects that IT can focus on now before having all the answers to every governance question in the company. Do they make sense for your organization? Download Data Governance for Life Sciences: An IT Survival Guide and let us know.
When it comes to proper data governance in Life Sciences, it seems there are just as many questions as there are potential answers.
Despite this, we believe you can take an incremental approach to make forward progress and ensure some early wins.
In the meantime, please download our latest whitepaper; Data Governance for Life Sciences: An IT Survival Guide.
