Data Remediation, Rationalization and Distribution Top CDO's agenda

- Citi Markets & Banking CDO John Bottega leads data charge - Collaborative data efforts can only help the industry - To succeed, data management programs need to be run like a business

Citi Markets & Banking

John Bottega

Chief Data Officer

Citi Markets & Banking
388 Greenwich St.
New York, NY 10013

PREVIOUS POSITIONS:
Global head of product data, Credit Suisse; product manager, product master environment, Merrill Lynch; head of data quality, Product Reference Data, Lehman Brothers.

EDUCATION:
B.S. in computer science, St. John’s University.

WHAT WORK EXPERIENCE HAD THE MOST LASTING IMPRESSION ON YOUR CAREER?
Since Lehman was where I first ventured into the data management discipline as a stand-alone function, I'd say that job had a pretty big impact on my career. Centralized data management was a new concept when I was there. Bring part of the beginning of the trend of centralized data management was very exciting and, I think it's fair to say, brought mt to my current position here at Citi.

WHAT INFLUENCED YOU THE MOST IN YOUR CAREER?
One great influence in my life is martial arts. For the past 16 years, I’ve studied, trained and now teach martial arts. My discipline is Okinawa karate, which emphasizes respect for those around you, the honing of strengths and improving of weaknesses.

LAST GOOD BOOK READ

"Faits of My Fathers" by John McCain

What's Next?

The industry is coming to recognize the benefits of industrywide collaborative data management efforts. The gathering of financial instrument data, pricing and corporate actions; and the process of customer onboarding, kyc and compliance are functions repeated by every firm. As these functions become more commoditized, more data management utilities will emerge to absorb these tasks. Data management in finance has been around for a long time, but only recently has it gained the kind of focus and attention that it now enjoys. Opportunities for improved quality and service will be the hallmark of data management over the foreseeable future.

VITALS

IT Budget

Exact numbers are being worked out, but I expect to see continued, strong support from management to invest in data across technology and operations.

Key Technology Management

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2008 INITIATIVES

System Integration

We are directing our new development to the emerging data management infrastructure, as well as migrating legacy systems.

Metrics

This is a key facet of our strategy. Data metrics are nearly nonexistent across the industry, making it difficult to benchmark. We’ve approached this issue by taking slices of our processes, identifying demonstrative metrics end to end for subsets of our functions.

Service Model

For the data management program to succeed, we need to run it like a business unto itself. Our clients need an established service model with defined SLAs. They need assurances of a solid production support infrastructure and an effective and transparent change-control process. The foundation of our support model is being established in 2007. We expect to reach various milestones of maturity in 2008 as we strive to support our Citi clients across the globe.

TOP 3 CURRENT PROJECTS

Data Remediation

With all the new regulatory programs impacting the business, the immediate need to cleanse our existing data is a top priority. We’ve established a Data Remediation program targeted at identifying and cleansing key elements of our data inventory to ensure compliance to the regulatory requirements.

Data Rationalization and Process Improvement

Like any bank/brokerage house on the Street, we have legacy repositories of information formally supporting various lines of business. The goal of our data management program is to eliminate redundant repositories while establishing the authoritative sources of our key data asset classes. Parallel to this, we are conducting reviews and rationalizations of the business processes that support these legacy systems. In many cases, the root cause of a data challenge is not the data, but the process by which the data is created and maintained. By looking at data, technology and process we are seeing improvements.

Data Distribution

In 2007, we are building the foundation and initial services of our Data Distribution Infrastructure. This includes the technology backbone, the creation and standardization of our data models, establishing a common ground for the communication of information from front-, middle-, and back-office processes and businesses.