GDPR compliance the perfect opportunity to modernize data architecture

GDPR compliance the perfect opportunity to modernize data architecture

The General Data Protection Regulation is now the most comprehensive data protection decree in the world. Though chiefly drafted to empower residents of the European Union with the clear legal right to control the collection and use of their personal data, the GDPR effectively impacts companies worldwide that offer goods or services to individuals in Europe, monitor the behavior of those individuals, and collect and process personal data belonging to individuals from the EU.

To ensure that data collectors and processors know the EU is serious, the Regulation includes serious penalties, including very substantial fines, for non-compliance.

While most organizations are focused on whether they are affected by the regulation, and if so, what they need to do to comply, they are missing the silver lining of the GDPR.

Specifically, because the GDPR’s provisions require affected companies to make significant changes in the ways in which they collect, store, process, protect, and even delete customer Information upon request, most organizations will have to make significant adjustments and modernizations to their data architectures in order to comply with the regulation.

There are a number of ways in which organizations can address the GDPR’s requirements. However, if companies take this opportunity to modernize their data architectures by implementing a data-centric model, they will not only be able to comply with the GDPR, but will also be positioned to comply with additional regulations in the future without having to undertake major initiatives every time something changes. Equally important, they will become more agile in their product and service development and rollouts, and more efficient and effective in their ability to respond to market trends and competitive threats.

The desire to improve organizations’ Information architectures by moving to a data-centric model is something that’s been on the minds of many of us in the data architecture and management world for a number of years. In fact, several years ago a document called The Data-Centric Manifesto was published and captured much of what was being discussed. A couple of statements in that document particularly and straightforwardly summarized what many of us already knew.

First, “The information architecture of large organizations is a mess.” Additionally, “A root cause of the messy state of information architecture in large institutions today... is the prevailing application-centric mindset that gives applications priority over data. The remedy is to tip this on its head. Data is the center of the universe; applications are ephemeral…We believe that the current Enterprise Information System paradigm, centered on applications, with data as second class citizens, is at the heart of most of the problems with current Enterprise Systems.”

This is a nice summation of the challenge data consumers face in accessing the data they need to produce the kinds of insights that drive innovation. Although many of us have known that placing data at the center of the IT universe made sense and could effectively erase this challenge, we also faced the frustrating reality that there’s never a good time for making fundamental changes in IT architectures.

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