On 3 August, 2021, Access Partnership’s Logan Finucan, Senior Manager, US, joined the Gulf Downstream Association (GDA) for Episode 18 in its series of GDA Conversations. He joined a panel of experts to discuss how downstream oil and gas companies are increasingly focusing on digital solutions to attain increased productivity and lower costs. These digital solutions’ success rests on data, a resource that used to be scarce and now is abundant. However, inadequate policies, both internal and external, can challenge the success of data-driven solutions, something that warrants further exploration.
The event covered a series of key issues:
- Data Classification Frameworks, which categorise data by sensitivity and business impact and are the essential starting point for data governance. The lack of data classification frameworks, or frameworks that are too rigid, can limit data management and lead to optimisation losses.
- Cloud-First Policies, which establish that, when procuring new or existing services, potential cloud solutions should be evaluated first and before considering alternative options, something that can lead to efficiency and security gains across the board.
- Digital Upskilling Initiatives, which aim at equipping the workforce with the knowledge to maintain a digital transformation process and fully capitalise data-driven insights. In the absence of this, digital transformation efforts will not succeed in transforming organisational culture.
- Data Flow Governance, which enables the growth of data-enabled businesses by facilitating data sharing and cloud migration. On the contrary, draconian data localisation requirements risk severely impairing digital transformation.
Watch the recording of the webinar here:
