Gartner: Quarter of global enterprises to have chief data officer by 2015

A quarter of large global organisations will have appointed a chief data officer (CDO) by the end of the year, a Gartner analyst has claimed.

In a blog post, Debra Logan, research vice president and Gartner Fellow, highlighted the growth in CDOs employed at large international enterprises.

CDOs are responsible for the management of data across an organisation. According to Gartner there are currently 100 staff with this title, twice as many as in 2012.

The majority of CDOs are hired by American companies (65 percent), with 20 percent in the UK.

Gartner research also noted that the proportion of female CDOs (25 percent) is twice that for CIOs (13 percent).

CDOs have mostly been appointed in heavily regulated industries, Logan noted, but are increasingly being seen in other sectors, which will drive an increase in the overall number by 2015.

"Banking, government and insurance are the first three industries to adopt the CDO role and in that order. However, we are now seeing other industries following. For example, we saw the first significant appointments in the advertising industry in 2013," she said.

Logan added that CIOs should not see the rise of CDOs as a threat to their own roles, and it will enable them to focus less on management of business data.

"CIOs should view the CDO as a peer and partner who can manage data and who has the knowledge, background and skills to do so, which allows CIOs to focus on the more-than-full time job that they already have."

HSBC's chief data officer Peter Serenita warned last year that financial firms are still struggling to implement enterprise-woide data management strategies as 'business as usual', although this should be the goal.