Managing Data through the Lens of an Ontology

Abstract

While the amount of data stored in current information systems continuously grows, and the processes making use of such data become more and more complex, extracting knowledge and getting insights from these data, as well as governing both data and the associated processes, are still challenging tasks. The problem is complicated by the proliferation of data sources and services both within a single organization, and in cooperating environments. Effectively accessing, integrating and managing data in complex organizations is still one of the main issues faced by the information technology industry today. Indeed, it is not surprising that data scientists spend a comparatively large amount of time in the data preparation phase of a project, compared with the data minining and knowledge discovery phase. Whether you call it data wrangling, data munging, or data integration, it is estimated that 50%-80% of a data scientists time is spent on collecting and organizing data for analysis. If we consider that in any complex organization, data governance is also essential for tasks other than data analytics, we can conclude that the challenge of identifying, gathering, retaining, and providing access to all relevant data for the business at an acceptable cost, is huge.