Are you ready for AI-powered governance? Four questions
Most data leaders tell me they're ready for AI-powered governance. Most aren't.
I've sat in the rooms where the strategy deck says one thing and the operating model says another. That gap is where pilots go to die.
Here are four questions I use to tell the difference. They take 10 minutes. They predict outcomes better than any vendor scorecard I've seen.
1. Is your governance program funded as a product or as compliance overhead?
Compliance budgets get cut in the next downturn. Product budgets get protected. If your CDO can't point to a P&L line tied to data, governance is a cost center waiting to be optimized away.
2. Can each data steward point to a KPI on the company dashboard they own?
If not, an agent will replace them, not work alongside them. Stewards who own a metric have a future in 2028. Stewards doing invisible cleanup work don't.
3. Has the team killed any governance process in the last 12 months?
If they only add (more reviews, more councils, more tags), they won't survive an agent rewrite. The willingness to subtract is the real maturity test. Most teams fail this one.
4. Is there an AI agent in production doing any governance work today?
Not a POC. Not a vendor demo. A running agent with an owner and a metric on it. If not, you're at year zero, regardless of what the AI strategy slide claims.
Score yourself. Four yes: you're ready and you already know it. Two or three yes: the next 18 months are where the work happens. Zero or one yes: stop buying tools. Fix the operating model first.
Run this on your own org this week. Tell me what you scored. I'll tell you what I see when I do.