Wikibon co-founder Dave Vellante and Paul Gillin, the former editor-in-chief of Computerworld, kicked off the second day of this week’s MIT Information Quality conference with an in-depth discussion about the pros and cons of appointing a chief data officer.

After recapping on their collaborations and the state of the publishing industry, Dave and Gillin address data quality. Dave highlights that information quality has received even less attention than data security up to this point, and notes that most organizations don’t have CDOs.

“[Hiring a CDO is a] luxury of the largest companies. There are some very large companies at this conference, a lot of big banks, big healthcare organizations, people from government,” Gillin replies. “Generally large companies are the ones that have the luxury to devote resources to data quality, which is a shame when you think of it because data quality is a problem in every sized company. It becomes an even more difficult problem with regulated companies and those who count their customers in the millions.”

In Dave’s view, organizations that want to become truly data-driven must appoint an executive-level figure to manage their Big Data and spearhead efforts to monetize it. He mentions that Mario Faria, the first CDO in Latin America, told him in an interview that he has no less than 11 different responsibilities.

Gillin believes that that’s not necessarily the case. He explains that data quality is an organizational issue, and as such, it must be addressed on an organization-wide level. He concludes the discussion by highlighting the potential benefits of a proactive approach to data quality assurance.

See the video below for the full session and be sure to check yesterday’s wrap-up for a summary of Day 1.