Data Governance Model for the National Power and Light Company (CNFL)

The projects a collaborative development of a data governance model (DGM) for the CNFL resulting in the improvement of the provision of quality in public services through the use of data. This is an innovative solution developed collaboratively across units and teams.

Innovation Summary

Innovation Overview

The improvement of data creation and data management in public institutions represents an opportunity for improving the service delivery to the citizens. Public institutions usually face the lack of tools and/or trained teams to correctly manage data and improve its governance, resulting in reduced efficiency and effectiveness in the use of public resources, as well as in limited service delivery. This context is similar inside of the CNFL in Costa Rica, which is the agency responsible of the provision of electricity.

The CNFL proposed the development of a data governance model to manage the data from its conception towards the processing and visualization to generate knowledge along the way and to positively drive the decision-making process. To achieve this, a group of 30 civil servants from different areas were trained by the INNOVAAP in data management, modeling, ethics, data architecture, evaluation, and other related topics. In parallel to this training, an organizational evaluation was developed to understand its strengths and weaknesses, and to identify areas of improvement. In this way, the project not only benefits from the creation and management of data, but from an evaluation of the organization to incorporate data more efficiently and with the purpose of improving the service delivery.

For this purpose, the INNOVAAP team developed a methodology to evaluate the level of maturity in CNFL's data analytics in order to know the status of the data. This is considered as a sustainable project because of its strategic purpose, aiming at incorporating new technologies with the improvement of data and human capacities.

Innovation Description

What Makes Your Project Innovative?

This project is a public innovation that brings together public institutions and the academia to respond to the need of better service delivery through data creation, use and management.

Innovation Development

Collaborations & Partnerships

The project was jointly developed by the CNFL and INNOVAAP, both public institutions. The former ones provided the teams and the necessary evidence, while the latter ones provided the methodology to evaluate the data maturity.

Users, Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

The beneficiaries of this project will be the CNFL due to the training, democratization of knowledge about the value of data, access to tools for data management and coordination between departments.

Innovation Reflections

Results, Outcomes & Impacts

30 civil servants from different units and teams received in-house training in data culture and governance, as well as in methodologies for training teams in data analytics. Specifically, the methodology was the Data Management Body of Knowledge provided by the Data Management Association in which they analyzed the level of data maturity of the institution.

Challenges and Failures

The only challenge identified along the process was the fitness of the methodology. It was time consuming and required specific pre-screening to find the closest one that met the needs of the CNFL.

Conditions for Success

Articulating actions between the two public institutions was key to advance in fulfilling the needs of the teams and those of the management in relation to the data. A strong data culture was a relevant aspect to promote in the institution, in particular in the socialization of ethics, modeling and data architecture to its evaluation, roles and responsibilities.

Replication

This project in general has a great potential for scalability; to assess the level of analytical maturity we use matrices, variables and a methodology that can be applied to any institution or company that seeks to increase the use of data analytics to achieve greater optimization, efficiency and modernization.

Lessons Learned

It is about looking for innovative tools while training staff to use them and understand their potential. Working with institutions that offer services to citizens is key to improving the quality, efficiency and development of the elements to which citizens have access.

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