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A Daily Lexicon of Trustworthy Data

005·34

centralization

/ˌsɛn.trə.laɪˈzeɪ.ʃən/ - n.

1 [colloq.] What the last reorg was moving away from and the next one is named after.Keep. Punchy.This is the problem.

Working definition

2. Consolidating data ownership, modeling, and decision authority into a single team or platform for consistency and control.

Filed

Seen in the wild · 4

Moving Revenue Into A YAML File Does Not Give It An OwnerOwner Missing
Your Pipeline Learned to Call Yesterday's Breakage NormalDefinition Drift
Everyone shipped data products. The decision rights never left the building.Owner Missing
The semantic layer is back to settle what a metric means. The metric is surprised anyone asked.Dashboard Theater

See also

data warehouseWhere data goes to be agreed upon, eventually, by people who have since left.
decentralizationThe half of the pendulum currently swinging away from the slide that recommended the other half.
federationThe word for centralization once the central team admits it cannot make anyone do anything.
single source of truthTerm struck pending the definitions of ownership, metric, and certification it depends on; without them the source is single but the truth is plural.