Last week, we talked about critical data elements – data elements that help us to achieve our priorities.

Given this definition, critical data elements will vary from time to time based on the selection criteria.

1. How to define CDEs?
   1. Contradictory challenges
      1. Domains are large
      2. Domains are limited
   2. So domains are too big and, in many cases they are also too small.
      1. Report-driven
      2. Policy-driven
      3. Process-Driven

How to define CDEs?

A common approach used to categorise and segment data is to divide it into data domains – subsets of data that describe specific business areas such as Customer data, Product data, Employee or transaction data.

This approach is commonly applied to master data management – allowing us to, for example, model and manage customer master data as distinct from other data domains.

Contradictory challenges

Domains are large

By their very nature domains can be very large.

If the customer domain contains hundreds of attributes not all of these are critical at any given time or for any given problem.

A domain-based approach is too big.

Domains are limited

At the same, time domains restrict data to a particular subject area.

Real business problems typically use data elements from multiple domains e.g. to calculate sales by customer I need product and customer data – data from two domains.

A domain-based approach is too small.

So domains are too big and, in many cases they are also too small.

Critical data elements are used to achieve specific business goals.

To identify these elements we need to look at how data supports a specific business problem.

Report-driven

One approach is to look at key metrics that are used to measure success

Which data elements are used in this report?

What are the key performance indicators in the scorecard?

Policy-driven

Which data is used to support a specific, published business policy?

Which data supports a specific regulatory requirement?

Which data is categorized as protected or sensitive in terms of legislation such as PoPIA or GDPR?

Process-Driven

Which data is an input or output of a critical business process?

Which data must be present for us to operate?

These kinds of questions produce a subset of data elements that can be regarded as critical within the context of a particular reporting requirement, regulatory initiative, or to achieve operational efficiency.