Define to gain power

By: Dick van Mersbergen

The third philosopher I came across at the Be Informed headquarters is the famous Chinese thinker and social philosopher Confucius. His quote reads:

When asked what he would do first if he were in power, Confucius responded:
"Cleansing the definitions of terms we use".

Cleansing the definition of terms we use..? Not many people seeking power would think of that. History shows us many other things considered better to do when in power: to conquer territory or neighboring countries; to eat nothing but cake; to kill all your opponents; to be loved; to indulge yourself with lush banquets; to keep tigers as pets; to possess a golden gun. The list is endless but nothing on redefining stuff. So why would Confucius want that, I thought?

Definitions are key to a proper function of society. As a child of the oldest civilization on earth, Confucius understood that the highest power is the power to define.

Objects vs Relationships
Sadly, it is very hard to create unambiguous and fully understood definitions. Everyone tends to have his own view. This is where both society and businesses process management (BPM) go wrong.

Or should I say Western societies and traditional BPM platforms? Because it is a Western approach to define objects and it is the way traditional BPM suites deal with the complex surrounding world.

A more Eastern style is to focus on the relationships between objects. This is more useful because the definition is co-owned by all the stakeholders involved. Define the relations between objects and you understand the objects better.

Meaningful relationships
In the field of BPM, Be Informed successfully took on a similar approach: creating and describing meaningful relationships between business activities. That is the core of Be Informed’s ontology. It represents nothing less than the language of the business. And he who controls language, controls everything.

With Be Informed, knowledge workers have the power to define. They no longer write endless system requirements, hand these over to the guys in IT and wait anxiously for the results. They define their processes themselves and by doing so they create the system. They are in control.

So we reversed Confucius’ wish: you don’t gain power to define, you define to gain power!

Organizing data governance and many ways to mess it up again

By: Frank Buytendijk, chief marketing officer

A world without government is a pretty horrible prospect. In such a world, everyone would be at war in a struggle to survive. To avoid such an environment, we prefer to hand over some of our natural rights to a government. We give up some of our freedom to receive protection. This is the purpose of government.

John Locke (1632-1704) has argued that creating a state is not a top-down exercise: a society is the result of a social contract between citizens. We pay taxes and therefore receive protection, infrastructure and social benefits.

In our modern days, there is a new aspect to this: we expect data governance. But is this well thought through yet? I published a series of articles on this question.

Whose Data Is It, Anyway? was the first article on data governance in the public sector and commercial enterprise. It presented a bit of a "big brother" doom and gloom scenario, I am afraid. But is it unlikely? I don't know.

In The TomTom Case – Were Police Using or Abusing Data Analytics?, I included a real-life case study, describing how a police force used collected TomTom satnav data in order to plan speed traps. Ethical or not?

The third article Who Owns Your Data? focused on the private sector. Digital data governance isn’t clearly organized. Who owns the location-based data on your smartphone? The phone company? The phone manufacturer? Or do you feel you own the text messages, voicemail, emails and pictures you stored on your phone? And who owns the status updates you put on Facebook, you or Facebook?

In the final article of the series Organizing Data Governance - And Many Ways to Mess it Up Again, I concluded with two topics. First I described how to organize data governance in a less traditional way. Then, I did the opposite and described some ways to mess it up again, to protect our interests until the public and private sectors get it right.