Chief Data Officer Course

The chief data officer role

The chief data officer is a senior executive responsible for the utilization and governance of data across the organization. While the chief data officer title is often shortened to CDO, the role should not be confused with that of the chief digital officer, which is also frequently referred to as CDO.

“The chief data officer is the senior person, with a business focus, who understands the strategy and direction of the business, but their focus is on how to underpin that with data,” says Caroline Carruthers, director at consulting firm Carruthers and Jackson, former chief data officer of Network Rail, and co-author of The Chief Data Officer’s Playbook and Data-Driven Business Transformation: How to Disrupt, Innovate and Stay Ahead of the Competition.

Although some CIOs and CTOs see creation of a chief data officer as encroachment on their turf, Carruthers says the boundaries are distinct. Chief data officers are responsible for areas such as data quality, data governance, master data management, information strategy, data science, and business analytics.

“The difference between the CDO and CIO in my mind is quite clear, and I often use the analogy of the bucket and the water,” Carruthers says. “The chief information officer is responsible for the bucket. They’re responsible for making sure that the bucket is the right size, that there are no holes in it, that it’s safe, and that it’s in the right place. The chief data officer is responsible for the fluid that goes in the bucket, comes out of the bucket, that it goes to the right place, that it’s the right quality and the right fluid to start with. Neither the bucket nor the water work without each other.”

Still, for now, the role of the chief data officer remains somewhat unsettled and evolving. NewVantage Partners says 72 percent of its executive survey respondents feel the chief data officer’s role remains unsettled while 28 percent describe it as a successful and established role.

Chief data officer responsibilities

While the chief data officer role was initially focused on compliance and data governance, IDC’s State of the CDO Survey, conducted between February and April 2020, found many chief data officers are now also responsible for using data to drive business outcomes. IDC found that 80 percent of the top KPIs used to measure chief data officer performance are business-oriented.

According to IDC, chief data officer responsibilities include:

• Governance: Advising on, monitoring, and governing enterprise data
• Operations: Enabling data usability, availability, and efficiency
• Innovation: Driving enterprise digital transformation innovation, cost reduction, and revenue generation
• Analytics: Supporting analytics and reporting on products, customers, operations, and markets