My morning starts with attending Greg Keeling and Wayne Harrison speaking on the challenges facing BMO Financial Group with their large meta data integration program.
What makes this presentation interesting for me is that this program is last year's Wilshire Meta Data Award winner. So being able to hear about some of the more real-life aspects of building an internationally recognized meta data program is something one doesn't always get to do.
The other interesting part is that Wayne isn't on the IT side of the project. His background is on the regulatory and government side of the organization. Wayne has a background that includes work for the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario. When introducing him, I asked him what I could say about him that isn't on his standard bio. He told me that he normally doesn't spend a lot of time with meta data analysts and data analysts -- most of his time is spend working with lawyers, risk analysts, and governance manager.
Greg, on the other hand, is up to his eyeballs in modelling tools, repositories, and models.
At BMO Financial Group they started with IBM's taxonomies for financials, then mapped those terms to their data models. They are in the process of moving from CA ERwin to IBM's Rational Data Architect so that they can better support the mappings from the IBM framework to their models.
Wayne and Greg showed a live demo of their meta data systems, which I really appreciated. One of the interesting things they have is a home grown portal system on top of their repository. This allows them to have better graphics and usability features. This also allows them to isolate end users from the repository technologies. They can change their repo tools without impact their users. They are moving soon to a product called InfoLibrarian, a small repository tool company.
BMO Financial Group uses DataFlux for data profiling. They expose the results of profiling within this portal as well. These data quality issues go onto the executive dashboard, so that business users can see at any time the level of data quality.
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Challenges in Metadata Integration: BMO Financial Group Case Study
Wayne Harrison
Senior Information Consultant
BMO Financial Group
Gregory Keeling
Consulting Manager
BMO Financial Group
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
08:30 AM - 09:30 AM
Level:
Advanced
BMO Financial Group's metadata journey is now heading toward a new challenge. It is necessary to create an integration metadata strategy and standard to ensure different types of sources are brought together to provide holistic business and technical value to the enterprise where the total is expected to be greater than the sum of the parts.
• What is metadata integration?
• How does BMO strategize the integration?
• Where are we having success and where do the challenges persist?
• Who is getting benefits from this?
• Why does this strategy sound good?
Wayne Harrison is the team leader of Data Governance and Quality at BMO Financial Group. He provides internal consulting on best practices for data accountabilities, and decisioning processes. Over his 25 year career, Wayne has worked in financial services, telecom and transportation. Wayne has held the role of chief data architect, delivered enterprise data architectures, designed data warehouses and operational systems. He has delivered developed and delivered training for IT professionals in data and process modeling.
Since he started at BMO, he has focussed on metadata and information management, stewardship and governance. He worked with BMO business stewards in the creation of data standards and standardization processes. Wayne has presented at DAMA on several occasions.
Greg has been with the Information Management (IM) department of BMO Financial Group since 2005. Prior to joining IM, Greg worked on a number of initiatives for BMO's Senior Vice-President in charge of Enterprise Systems (Information Management, IT Strategy, and Enterprise Architecture).
Greg's work focuses on governance, standards, change management, and communications as part of a team overseeing BMO's enterprise-wide Information Management Policy. He has spoken on data governance to audiences in Canada and the United States.
Before joining BMO in 2003, Greg spent five years with the Information and Privacy Commissioner/Ontario (IPC) where he held various roles including Executive Assistant to the Commissioner, Head of Communications and Technology Services, and Director of Corporate Services. Prior to joining the IPC, Greg worked for six years for the Government of Ontario delivering services to promote public access to government information.
Greg has a BA (History and Political Studies) and an MA (Political Studies) from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. He was the first recipient of the University of Toronto's Certificate in Media and New Technology Management. Greg received a Certificate of Excellence from the National Quality Institute and Public Sector Quality Council in Ontario for his work integrating federal, municipal, and provincial government telephone listings into a unified "Blue Pages." He is a Fellow of the 21st Century Trust and was the inaugural George Bell Fellow in Strategic Studies at the Canadian Institute of Strategic Studies. Greg is currently enrolled in the Master of Business Administration program through the Institute of Canadian Bankers and Dalhousie University.