Take the EU Directive, as the EU[i]
defines: A "directive" is a
legislative act that sets out a goal that all EU countries must achieve.
However, it is up to the individual countries to decide how. On the other
hand a regulation is more strict: A
"regulation" is a binding legislative act. It must be applied in its
entirety across the EU.
What a wonderful metaphor for Business
Intelligence Enterprise Architecture (BI EA): directives and regulations based
on the subsidiarity principle.
As the EU defines the subsidiarity
principle in the Maastricht Treaty and confirms it in the later Treaties as
well:
1.
The general aim of the principle of subsidiarity is to guarantee a degree of
independence for a lower authority in relation to a higher body or for a local
authority in respect of a central authority. It therefore involves the sharing
of powers between several levels of authority, a principle which forms the
institutional basis for federal States.
2.
(…).
3.
Under the second paragraph of Article 5 of the EC Treaty there are three
preconditions for intervention by Community institutions in accordance with the
principle of subsidiarity.
a. It
must not be an area which comes under the exclusive competence of the
Community.
b.
The objectives of the proposed action cannot be sufficiently achieved by the
Member States.c. The action can therefore, by reason of its scale or effects, be implemented more successfully by the Community.
Replace Community
with Corporate Information Management and Member
States with Business Units, or line
management or user groups,… and there you have it: a sound philosophical
and legislative basis for Business Intelligence Enterprise Architecture and
program management.
In the 25 years I have been active in BI and CRM, I
hear the same discussions over and over: the rigid architecture regulations
struggling with local flexibility the business needs to deliver maximum added
value. If the BI EA could grasp the essence of subsidiarity and change his
regulations into directives, Business Intelligence departments and information
management would get more buy in from the business customers without creating
chaos.
Gartner’s Research VP Andreas Bitterer[ii]
said, “IT leaders should concentrate not only on the technological aspects of
BI, but also on the severe lack of analytical skills. Second, they should use a
‘think global, act local’ approach in their BI programmes to provide the right
level of autonomy and agility to avoid the bottlenecks that overly centralised
BI teams create, while simultaneously establishing enough consistency and
standards for enterprise-wide BI adoption.”
There is a lot of truth in this. Let’s hope
more and more organisations will heed the warning from Mr. Bitterer and learn
from the EU.
