FIMA Europe 2025

2025

London

Data Governance, Privacy, and Quality: symptoms and causes

At FIMA Europe in November, where we will once again cover this important regular theme: how can data leaders effectively drive compliance – and stay compliant! – with a growing number of regulations on data, including the EU AI Act? Ahead of the event, Simone Steel looking back at the recent history of data regulation and offering a friendly provocation to the data leaders’ community.

Think like a public health professional: would you go around checking how every restaurant is preparing every meal every day? Or would you focus on giving professionals sufficient knowledge (contagions, pathogen transmission), access to training (hygiene habits, apprenticeship, certification), clear and simple rules of the road (standards), and checks and balances (surprise inspections)? We cannot make data conform with all expectations from all stakeholders by redesigning the system every time; i.e. this is not sustainable. But we can improve the complex adaptive system by shifting our focus to people and their interactions in our businesses.

At FIMA Europe in November, where we will once again cover this important regular theme: how can data leaders effectively drive compliance – and stay compliant! – with a growing number of regulations on data, including the EU AI Act? Ahead of the event, Simone Steel looking back at the recent history of data regulation and offering a friendly provocation to the data leaders’ community.

Think like a public health professional: would you go around checking how every restaurant is preparing every meal every day? Or would you focus on giving professionals sufficient knowledge (contagions, pathogen transmission), access to training (hygiene habits, apprenticeship, certification), clear and simple rules of the road (standards), and checks and balances (surprise inspections)? We cannot make data conform with all expectations from all stakeholders by redesigning the system every time; i.e. this is not sustainable. But we can improve the complex adaptive system by shifting our focus to people and their interactions in our businesses.