EDM Council Working Group Discusses Data Quality Standard

The EDM Council working group on data quality, set up earlier this year, has started looking at data quality standard ISO 8000.

ISO 8000 specifies requirements for quality of master data, and includes different parts on vocabulary, exchange of information, and data architecture.

Washington DC-based Mike Atkin, managing director, EDM Council, said the group is in initial discussions about the standard, reviewing if the mechanisms in the standard can be applied to the financial data quality work. “I’m pretty excited about where that’s going,” he said.

The working group, which only accepts members from user firms, has in the first five meetings focused on defining the components of data quality. The aim is to create a data quality framework, which can enable cross-industry comparison, meaning firms can benchmark themselves against their peers.

Meanwhile, the EDM Council is also working on promoting the creation of standards in other parts of the industry. At the EDM Council meeting in London in September, Atkin talked about the regulatory focus on systemic risk, and said that “if there’s nothing else that will come out of this, it will be standards.”

“A common language in our industry is missing and needed,” he said, explaining that efforts aimed at coordinating work between standards bodies is currently underway. This is particularly true in the entity identification space. “There is broad acceptance that an entity identifier is required,” he said.

With the regulatory focus on industry standards, Atkin also encouraged firms to engage in the discussions. He said now is the time to pay attention “at a fairly detailed level,” to ensure the standards that are created can be implemented and will not be too costly to adopt.