Why Data Governance and Modeling Need a First-Principles Rebuild | CDO Matters Ep. 108

Agents are about to hit data systems and governance frameworks at a volume, velocity, and variety they were never designed for. Bolting AI onto the old model may turn out to be the riskier bet.

📌 In this episode:

Why agents bring back the three Vs of big data, and why even Google-scale systems weren't built for that much concurrency

Winfried's first-principles view of governance: negotiation, direction, and accountability

Why longer guardrail lists make agents worse at following rules, and why "human in the loop" is too passive a role

Why data governance belongs inside corporate governance, not beside separate AI, IT, and risk frameworks

💬 The takeaway: "So much of what we've built over the last thirty years has become so monolithic and so big and so inflexible... I think we may be better off just starting from scratch." — Malcolm Hawker

About the host + guests Malcolm Hawker is a former Gartner analyst, Chief Data Officer at Profisee, Editor-in-Chief of CDO Matters on Substack, and host of the CDO Matters Podcast. Guest: Joe Reis is [Owner, Data Engineer + Architect ] at ThinkQuick, LLC. Author of Mixed Model Arts, which rebuilds data modeling from first principles for both humans and AI agents. Guest: Winfried Etzel is [Sr Specialist Data Management and Podcast Host with DAMA Norway] at Equinor. Author of Data Governance in the Wild, which rethinks governance from first principles.

Subscribe to CDO Matters Monthly → https://profisee.com/cdo-matters-community/#join-community Follow Malcolm on LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/malhawker/ Guest → https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephreis/ Guest → https://www.linkedin.com/in/winfried-adalbert-etzel/