Bringing producers and consumers together with data contracts

The definition and evolution of the data contract should be a collaboration between the data producers and the data consumers.

We use the data contract to bring these groups of people much closer together, working in partnership.

The data consumers can explain the value the data has, and how it furthers the business objectives.

That helps incentivise the data producers to produce better quality data, as they take some ownership of that deliverable.

I wouldn’t recommended making this process too formal or too strongly governed. I believe when barriers are removed and people come together we’ll get good outcomes.

That’s why so much of data contracts is about bringing data producers and data consumers closer together, and changing our data culture to one that values data throughout the organisation.