#156 Building a Holistic Data Governance Strategy at RMIT, with Nonna Milmeister, Chief Data and Analytics Officer at RMIT University (Part 1)
Born in Moscow Russia, Nonna got her first degree in Engineering but after emigrating to Australia, soon realised there were few engineering jobs around. Nonna says she had no choice but to do more study and decided on a master’s degree in project management from RMIT.
Nonna has spent the last two years at RMIT building a data and governance strategy. In this session she shares her journey, as well as how they set about establishing a culture for data governance.
The RMIT journey covers everything from agreeing definitions, certifying reports and using data trustees. She also shares how to build happy teams and how through partnering with the university, they are better equipping graduates from the university with practical experience for workforce-ready employees. Tune in to hear more on her journey!
Enjoy the show!
Quotes
“I had applied to three different universities and thought, well, if I'll be accepted into one, I'll just do that. And I was accepted to all three, then it was a big choice, to do Computer Science, Master’s of Engineering, or to do Project Management. For that, project management probably suits me more.”
“RMIT had hired me and thought, this is just perfect. I have to give back what RMIT gave me and I am very happy to work for RMIT, it's an amazing institution with really rich history,”
“The company engaged a very large consulting company with a lot of money to get them to define methodology for how they estimate the cost of productivity, how can they come up with 250 page report that they presented to our team and our general manager? And after the meeting, I had a feeling that no one was any wiser, wiser on how to actually do it. And no one was in a position to read the 250 page report. So I worked, I talked to a few people, worked very long hours when my kids went to sleep. For about a week, I came up with a six page methodology that was quite easy to understand.”
“But you can never start with technology, you start with culture. And in every organization that I've worked for, the first thing I've done is to understand what is the business strategy, what does this company or organization really want to achieve?”
“RMIT was very different to commercial organizations that I've worked for before. Because it's a non for profit organization, and people at RMIT genuinely care about students about the quality of education, and less care about, you know, reducing costs. And all these things that large sort of commercial companies worried about.”
“Before you implement any technology, you need to build capability within the team that's really important to how this team needs to be structured. What are the key skills that are required? How do we mix them together? How do we make that team successful? How do we train the team? How do we create a really good atmosphere within a team? How do we work with the rest of the company so that is really important as well.”
“The short answer is governance is not something that a Chief Data Officer does. Data Governance is something that is done by everyone in the organization. And I think what's the most important thing there is to make sure that everyone understands what the accountabilities are.”
“I had probably the best compliment I ever had in my entire career, because someone said, you have created a buzz. That's what data governance is all about. You know, when people start talking about definitions, when people start talking about how we structure our data within the organization, when people understand that they are responsible for how to handle data, if they input data into the system, they're responsible for that quality. “
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