Data Governance Best Practice Award

PRESS RELEASE
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Davida Berger, President, DebTech International LLC
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The Data Governance Best Practice Award Recognizes
Sallie Mae


SHORT HILLS-May 27, 2011—DebTech International LLC, The Data Administration Newsletter (TDAN.com) and Wilshire Conferences Inc. have announced the winner of the 2011 Data Governance Best Practice Award. From among a pool of exceptionally accomplished nominees, the prestigious panel of judges chose Sallie Mae as this year’s recipient.

Additional finalists for the award were ConAgra Foods and Lexmark.

Chairman of the judging panel, Robert S. Seiner, Publisher of TDAN.com and President & Principal of KIK Consulting & Educational Services said, “The submissions review and interview process for judging of the 2011 Data Governance Best Practice Award highlighted several incredible data governance programs.  The judges were proud to select Sallie Mae as this year’s winner with a fascinating demonstration of how their program contributed to helping save the company during tumultuous market changes and has become ingrained in their daily business initiatives.”

Michele Koch, Director, Data Governance Office and Barbara Deemer, Chief Data Steward at Sallie Mae were thrilled to receive the award.

“We recognize that it is a competitive, international award and our competition included other companies also doing great Data Governance (DG) work.  The objective of the DG Program at Sallie Mae is to ‘solve boundary-spanning issues by pulling together the pieces of the data puzzle.’  The goal of our program is to use horizontal alignment to achieve what is impossible to do in separated, vertical silos. This is evidenced by the participation of all our Lines of Business (LOBs) in the program.  We demonstrated business value from day one and have been able to leverage that momentum over the last five years to grow our DG program as changes in our industry have caused Sallie Mae to redefine our business.”

The award will be formally presented at the Data Governance and Information Quality Conference on June 28, 2011 in San Diego, CA.

Click here to view the submission from the winner and finalists.

About the Data Governance Best Practice Award
The award is given to the practitioners within a customer organization (ie. corporation, government agency or non-profit, as opposed to a vendor) in recognition of the business value and technical excellence they have achieved in the design and implementation of an outstanding data governance program.

Each submission is judged on the following criteria:

  • Sponsorship, planning and framework
  • Business requirements and business participation
  • Data governance program structure
  • People-program team and the data governance roles
  • Measurements-program and success stories

Judges of the 2011 Award were:

  • Robert S. Seiner, President, KIK Consulting & Education Services and Publisher. TDAN.com
    (Chairman of the Judging Panel)
  • Elizabeth Davis, Senior Risk Officer, International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group
  • Philip Howard, Research Director Data Management, Bloor Research
  • John Ladley, President, IMCue Solutions
  • Brigadier Richard Nugee, The British Army, Winner of the 2010 Data Governance Best Practice Award
  • Anne Marie Smith, Ph.D., Director, EIM Consulting, LiquidHub
  • Gwen Thomas, President, Data Governance Institute

About the Data Governance  and Information Quality Conference
The Data Governance and Information Quality Conference (DGIQ) scheduled for June 27-30, 2011 in San Diego, CA will focus on the “how tos” from getting started with data governance and information quality to sustaining and achieving data governance maturity. The conference features pre and post conference tutorials by data governance and information quality experts, six conference tracks and more than 30 case studies.  For additional information and the agenda please visit http://www.dgiqconference.com.