Strategic Data Governance - Promoting Responsible AI

In today’s age of rapidly advancing AI capabilities, implementing Strategic Data Governance is crucial in ensuring responsible innovation.

How do we prioritise trust in AI initiatives?

How can Data Governance be implemented to form the guardrails for AI to operate?

Can we ensure the use and sharing of data meets privacy and security requirements while meeting strategic business goals?

These are important questions to answer, and strategic data governance has a role to play in building trust in AI.

Collaborate with Executives

The first and most important activity is to organise a session with the executives to understand what AI is and how it can be used to benefit your organisation given the industry that you are in.

Artificial intelligence or AI in its simplest term is the development of methods and algorithms that allow computers to behave in an intelligent way. AI refers to the simulation of human intelligence in machines that are programmed to think and act like humans.

Machine Learning is the engine behind AI and has allowed AI to become more sophisticated and become an increasingly important tool in every business.

Other basic terms to discuss is What is Conversational AI and Generative AI and how can they be used with other technologies for instance Robotic Process Automation (RPA)?

Chatbots are computer programs that mimic human conversation and make it easy for people to interact with online services using natural language. Many organisations started with Q&A automation, but this has now expanded to a complete service for some organisations. Automation is key here and it can really make a positive difference to the bottom line of organisations.

Generative AI has become very popular in the last year and it is a category of AI algorithms that enables content creation and novel outputs based on the data they have been trained on. Generative AI has a wide range of applications, including creating images, text and audio with ChatGPT often used.

The combination of AI and RPA also known as Intelligence Automation (IA) enables machine learning, natural language processing and cognitive automation to have a positive effect to business process and workflows. For instance, Uiflow now has the capability to build RPA with generative AI through the ChatGPT extension. This enables novel content creation and automation.

Collaboration with Executives

Collaborating with executives is not just about the basics but also about the opportunities and risks that face the organisation in the use of AI. In a recent course I ran with executives in a government department I facilitated a discussion on the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats posed by the use of AI. This was critical in establishing an 'Acceptable Use of AI Policy' that could be used to harness the potential of AI while limiting the department to external threats.

The Strategic use of Data Governance becomes a critical aspect in implementing responsible AI. Data Governance can ensure that the data used to train AI models is of high quality and free from bias. AI can enhance data governance by providing insights and automation and assist in improving data quality. Strategic Data Governance has a role to play in ensuring AI models are transparent, explainable, compliant with regulations and working within the guardrails set.

A recent example was where AI enabled the automation of a data governance policy through data classification, data quality checks and data lineage tracking.

In some instances, a discussion around the cyber security risks is important and how can Strategic Data Governance reduce the risk. The effective classification of data across the organisation is important so that the appropriate cyber security controls can be applied. Establishing an effective ChatGPT environment that is in a private cloud for the organisation is a good step but adding data governance is important as well so everyone is clear on what data can be shared in that environment and what data cannot be shared according to data governance rules outlined in the policy.

When Strategic Architects run 'AI for Leaders' Courses we discuss with the Sponsor what are the key outcomes required. A general awareness of the basics is important but what the business outcomes that need to be met to achieve success in the course is vital.

I will be discussing this in greater depth at the ISACA event.

If you are unable to attend the ISACA Trust in AI conference in Brisbane next week, further information on this topic can be found at the home of Strategic Architecture: Courses and Workshops (strategicarchitecture.com.au) or contact us on info@strategicarchitecture.com.au