Assessing a Data Administrative Program - High-Performance Web Databases: Design, Development, and Deployment - page 681

integrated with other organizational functions. It is understood that human
resource divisions are responsible for establishing personnel policies,
coordinating personnel actions and training, and monitoring the organiza-
tion's compliance with personnel laws and rules. Many personnel actions
are performed by everyone in the organization, however, and the person-
nel specialists in HR divisions provide training and assistance to the rest of
the organization so they can perform those functions. For example, the HR
division does not unilaterally:
• Decide what skills are needed.
• Advertise for certain kinds of professionals.
• Interview and hire the candidates.
• Conduct performance evaluations.
• Layoff or retire people.
The way in which personnel management is accepted and integrated
into the everyday workings of the entire organization is the situation that
data administration should be evolving toward. For that to happen, data
administration organizations must determine exactly where they are along
their evolutionary path now. A program assessment can help do that.
Part of institutionalizing data administration is ensuring that data
administration does not become a bottleneck to the rest of the develop-
ment activities. When a data administration department consists solely of
inspectors who review products after the fact, it is not an integral part of
the process. this is not to say that the policing aspect of data administra-
tion should go away. But there are different ways of providing review ser-
vices, and customers react to them differently.
A data administration function can be performed in a way that appears
to be either helpful or controlling. Current functions that are viewed as con-
trolling can be changed so they are viewed as helpful. For example, a data
administration department may be responsible for ensuring that systems
development and maintenance teams develop data elements that comply
with standards. Data administrators may currently require the develop-
ment team to construct the data elements on their own. The data adminis-
tration department may check the data elements after the software version
has been released to tell the development team which data elements were
not constructed properly. The same function could be carried out in a help-
ful way if the data administration department helps the development team
create standard data elements during the analysis and design phases so
when the software version is ready to be released, the data elements are
already in compliance with the standards. Data administration depart-
ments that provide helpful services are going to be more successful insti-
tutionalizing data administration in their organizations.