IT Governance Blog

CobiTdefinition:

Establish and maintain an enterprise information model to enable applications development and decision-supporting activities,
consistent with IT plans as described in PO1. The model should facilitate the optimal creation, use and sharing of information by the
business in a way that maintains integrity and is flexible, functional, cost-effective, timely, secure and resilient to failure.

Bill says,

I haven’t seen a company yet that has done this one even close to complete. What it’s talking about is defining data models for customers, vendors, employees, etc - across all applications define a consistent data model as an aid to integration and reporting. With a new company starting up I think this is something that could be done, but most of us have legacy data and applications that make a consistent data model very difficult.

Still, it is worth the effort to get it done. With a consistent and holistic enterprise information architecture model the quality of your analytics, the simplicity of your integrations and the power of your business are all magnified.

Take something as simple as the employee data model. Should be a no-brainer right? Well, it isn’t. Your HR program came stock with certain fields, your CRM with others and you probably have built a myriad of other functional applications leveraging employee data. Taking the time to make the data models consistent across all employee applications is a hard project to fund. More likely you will define your employee data model at the data warehouse level, and map your integrations with each application such that it feeds the necessary data. Once you have a data model defined in the warehouse you are about as close to having a solid data model as you could expect.

Still, even though it is hard it needs to be done the best you can.

The first step in Defining the Information Architecture is defining the enterprise information architecture model.

CobiT definition:

The information systems function creates and regularly updates a business information model and defines the appropriate systems
to optimise the use of this information. This encompasses the development of a corporate data dictionary with the organisation’s
data syntax rules, data classification scheme and security levels. This process improves the quality of management decision making
by making sure that reliable and secure information is provided, and it enables rationalising information systems resources to
appropriately match business strategies. This IT process is also needed to increase accountability for the integrity and security of
data and to enhance the effectiveness and control of sharing information across applications and entities.

Control over the IT process of
Define the information architecture

that satisfies the business requirement for IT of
being agile in responding to requirements, to provide reliable and consistent information and to
seamlessly integrate applications into business processes

by focusing on
the establishment of an enterprise data model that incorporates a data classification scheme
to ensure the integrity and consistency of all data

is achieved by
• Assuring the accuracy of the information architecture and data model
• Assigning data ownership
• Classifying information using an agreed-upon classification scheme

and is measured by
• Percent of redundant/duplicate data elements
• Percent of applications not complying with the information
architecture methodology used by the enterprise
• Frequency of data validation activities

Control objectives:

PO2 Define the Information Architecture

PO2.1 Enterprise Information Architecture Model
PO2.2 Enterprise Data Dictionary and Data Syntax Rules
PO2.3 Data Classification Scheme
PO2.4 Integrity Management

Check out the links for details on the control objectives.