Angelo Erbacci of DAMA Italy will open the Data Management Summit Italy

Angelo Erbacci of DAMA Italy will open the Data Management Summit Italy

We reveal day after day all the professionals who will participate with their papers in the most important event of data management. For the first time, a forum seeks to focus on data management as a whole, from governance, security, cloud, machine learning, data virtualization, and more. Today we introduce Angelo Erbacci. The institutional presence of DAMA Italia is a source of pride for the DMS organization.

Tell us a bit about your career

After graduating in Economics and Business Management I obtained a PhD in Management Engineering at the Politecnico di Milano, where among other things I started to approach the topic of data management.

Then I worked for a few years in France at the OECD, one of the most important international organizations that make information and data management their daily bread to produce hundreds of reports and analyses on the performance of the economy in major advanced countries worldwide, including of course Italy. It is in this context that I became aware of the importance of the data and the quality of the information managed, without which we would otherwise risk arriving at erroneous evidence and conclusions on the reality and phenomena that we try to govern.

After my return to Italy, I started a wonderful adventure, still ongoing today, with INEMA one of the leading consulting companies in Italy in the field of operations and business organization. Through INEMA I met DAMA International and together with some colleagues we founded the Italian chapter of the Association – DAMA Italy – which we try to build together day after day to increase awareness and culture about the importance of data in the Italian context. 

What are your challenges, what do you like to do with data?

The main challenge that I see related to data in the Italian contest is certainly the need (I would say now the urgency) to increase and increase management awareness of the importance of data and their proper management. 

All companies have their own business strategy, a financial strategy of operational and organizational policies but very few companies in Italy have developed a specific approach to the management and governance of data as real corporate assets. 

So, with DAMA Italy we try to respond to this challenge: to spread the culture of the importance of data at the corporate level. I think that it is still a cultural challenge that Italy has to face in order to be able to increase in order to win the challenge of increasing competition in international markets that are now more and more globalized. 

Do you think that companies have an adequate culture to manage data in a different way?

Unfortunately, we are only at the beginning of a path of change that should lead to a greater awareness of the importance of proper data management. 

Suffice it to say that in many of the companies we work with, there is not the slightest awareness of what are the key data (we could call them Mission Critical Data) on which the company itself depends and without which it could hardly do business.

Concepts such as data governance or data ownership, rather than reasoning about the different dimensions of data quality are unfortunately still very far from the common imagination and reflections of most of our companies. 

What are the most important challenges for CIO, CDO, CTO in 2021?

• Making their colleagues understand the importance of a shared approach to data management, which unfortunately can no longer just be a problem for the company’s IT department, but must be increasingly seen as a business priority.
• What do you want to talk about at the Data Management Summit?

• I would be pleased to present in detail the activity of DAMA Italy and why it is important to support it as a real cultural movement that in its small way can help to increase the skills of Italian management.

Did you support the event from the beginning, why?

First of all for friendship and esteem towards Michele Iurillo (the organizer) who is also an associate of DAMA Italy and because he has been fighting for years like us on these issues.

Moreover, by now the Data Management Summit has become an event of reference for the sector to which it is an honor to be able to bring a small contribution