Data Sharing Lessons from Toddlers
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Alex Bentley explains why sharing is becoming so popular beyond the toddler crowd
A major discussion point at the Gartner MDM Summit was data sharing. Companies, government and health organizations are now sharing more information, as clear benefits result from the sharing. There are a few similarities, ironically, between company data sharing, social media and my 3-year-old son.
Mine! Mine!
My 3-year-old, Max, is learning to share. Today, he can't imagine any good that results from sharing. To paraphrase - "You'll pry this Matchbox car/iPhone/remote/train from my cold, dead hands." (Yes, his agility with the remote and iPhone is like seemingly all kids his age. I can't imagine what devices he'll use as a teenager.)
Some internal organizations view their data in the same way. For Max, it's an emotional cost, and for some organizations, there's a significant financial investment in addition to the perceived loss of control. Fortunately, there are deployment options that enable organizations to rapidly share while maintaining authorship and ownership of the data.
Community Rising
Facebook, Twitter and other social media tools are about the community, and most importantly, about the community responding, augmenting and amplifying any one individual’s participation within it.
This is the hook for sharing data within and across organizations. Once you commit to sharing data, conversations about the data (or the process around it) are a natural next step.
In many cases, these discussions lead to new insights between groups for additional value. For example, additional insight and conversations between law enforcement agencies based on data sharing have potentially huge implications for public safety. Our Initiate Exchange solution is driving these conversations between hospitals and the physicians that refer patients to them on a daily basis.
Appropriate Sharing
In instant messages or texts, you might see the acronym TMI, or Too Much Information. This is a critical piece of information that some of Facebook users haven't quite grasped (and if you've been following, Facebook itself seems less concerned).
Privacy, consent and authorization are critical parts of a data governance initiative (see Amar’s post on security breaches). However, lean forward on this - look for reasons to share data versus reasons not to. You'll likely find many benefits, which can then justify the business investment in a data governance project. Even the US Intelligence community determined a way to share information in a social network with their “Facebook for Spies” idea.
All this sharing leads to faster, more accurate business decisions. This is the lynchpin of my friend Karl W's article about customer onboarding - the more relevant information you can provide during a business process, the higher likelihood of a positive result. As the Facebook generation already knows, and as Max is learning, sharing is the new black, and benefits everyone.
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