Sometimes vendors do get it (mostly) right. Hewlett-Packard put together a brief white paper in February of this year laying out their view of Business Intelligence (BI) for 2009 (and beyond). I think that they got it largely right. Their #3 trend is that as BI increases in importance and impact, data governance and data quality become more critical than ever. Below is a summary of the trend, my thoughts on whether HP got it right and what the trend may mean for HIT.

HP predicts: “a bad economy provides a good opportunity” for those companies willing to invest in BI, Master Data Management, Data Governance and Data Quality.

The Verdict: This prediction is axiomatic, that any BI implementation ever got off the ground without a thorough analysis of data quality and data governance issues is an embarrassment. HP is correct that formal Data Governance committees and Centers of Excellence which define standards, disseminate best practices and establish processes will be increasingly present on the departmental, enterprise and industry scales.

HIT Impact: Immense. Intra- and Inter-entity data governance is the foundation of “meaningful use”. In the absence of standardization (or at least cross-referenced indexing) of terminology, data elements, transformation algorithms, metric formulas and report definitions, the result is GIGO. Where, after all, is the usefulness of sharing meaningless reports?

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.