Mark Webster, manager of enterprise data management at Loyens & Loeff (English)
Mark Webster
Position:
Manager Enterprise Data Management bij Loyens & Loeff
Expertise:
- Data Management
- Application Management
- Enterprise ArchitectureData Governance
- Compliance & Security
Experience:
Extensive experience in legal and financial services
Responsible for strategic data management initiatives within Loyens & Loeff
Specialisatie:
- Data quality and metadata management
- Stakeholder management in complex organizations
- Security and compliance in data-driven environments
CDMP-performance
- Status: Associate
- Specialist in: Data Governance, Metadata Management
“Connected Data Academy gives a lot of room to introduce personal use cases”
Mark Webster is an Enterprise Architect and Data Management Manager at Loyens & Loeff, a leading European law and tax firm headquartered in the Netherlands. Because he saw the value of data early on, he started to advocate for data management within the firm. The DAMA CDMP Specialist training courses from Connected Data Academy gave him a solid foundation on which to build.
What is the role of data in the legal profession?
“The role of data has been very small in our field, compared to other industry sectors, for a very long time. It was only a few years ago that more people started to see that there is a huge amount of value in all the data that we have stored. They also realized that you have to be very careful in our field; that safety, ethics and compliance must always be central. As a result, the legal sector has been slower to adapt to data-driven work. With the arrival of AI, everyone realizes: the opportunities are so great, we really have to get started now. But, as I said, safe, ethical and have the correct data.”
Why did you follow the CDMP specialist training courses Data Governance and Metadata Management?
“I have been working in IT for a long time. In the past, I have also been a database administrator, data warehouse architect and I then became an IT Director, leading large global teams supporting applications, mainly Dynamics, around world and around the clock. This gave me a lot of experience, especially in the realms of architecture. When I started at Loyens & Loeff we started to use the TOGAF framework for architecture. after I became responsible for enterprise data management at Loyens & Loeff in addition to my role as an architect, I looked for a similar framework that I can use to organize my own thoughts. A framework that I can also use to explain to others in our organization what data management is and what preconditions you need to meet to extract value from data in a safe and ethical way. I came across the DAMA DMBoK and followed the Fundamentals course. After that, I felt the need to go into more depth. I first chose data governance because that is the backbone of everything. After that, I picked up metadata management because I have little experience with it and it is a sub-area in which you easily make mistakes. I want to tackle it thoroughly from the start. In the future, I also want to follow the Data Quality specialist training, because the value you get from data naturally depends on data quality.”
Why did you choose the Connected Data Academy?
“There are not that many DAMA trainers in the Netherlands and certainly not that many parties that offer classroom lessons. You can follow an online training in more places, but such a training has a completely different value. You are mainly trained to pass the exam, not to become good at your profession. At Connected Data Academy, the classes for the DAMA CDMP Specialist training are a maximum of five people, which means there is a lot of personal attention and you have plenty of room to introduce your own use cases. What I found special was that they offered the training in English especially for me, after asking the other participants if they had any objections. You don’t often find that kind of customization in other places.”
Do you have any advice for other data management specialists?
“Yes: at least take a CDMP Fundamentals training and don’t be too quick to think that you know it all. Because this field is so complex and has so many interrelated factors that it is difficult to see through it all. DAMA DMBoK gives you a framework to hang things on. The framework shows you what you need to pay attention to before you start with analytics and AI. It also gives you a way to make clear to others what data management is. If you also want to relate all of this to your own organization, then Connected Data Academy is the right place for you.”
More references? See:
https://connecteddataacademy.com/nieuws/
