In our increasingly digital economy, data is the oxygen that powers transformation, fuels artificial intelligence, drives regulatory compliance, and sharpens competitive advantage. From cloud migration, machine learning models, and blockchain applications to real-time customer insights and ESG reporting, every strategic initiative hinges on one critical foundation: data.
Yet despite this universal dependence, most organizations still grapple with fundamental data challenges — inconsistent definitions, fragmented governance, escalating regulatory expectations, and massive growth in data’s volume, variety, and velocity. In other words — as every data professional and even every data user understands — data is more critical than ever, and yet harder than ever to manage effectively.
It’s precisely in this high-stakes context that best practices in data management are not just beneficial — they’re essential.
Why Best Practices Matter in a Complex Data Landscape
A best-practices-based approach provides the structure, consistency, and maturity needed to turn data into strategic value. It helps organizations assess and improve their data management programs across multiple dimensions: from architecture and governance to education and usage.
Best practices serve three essential functions:
- Foundation for Trust: Without trusted data, analytics mislead, compliance falters, and innovation stalls. Best practices promote integrity, consistency, ethics, and lineage across the data lifecycle.
- Alignment with Business Goals: Data must serve business/organizational needs and mission, not the other way around. A best-practice framework aligns data initiatives with strategic outcomes, ensuring data is fit for purpose and delivering value, not just technically sound.
- Scalability and Agility: As organizations transition to the cloud and adopt AI, their data environments become more distributed and complex. Best practices enable scalability by aligning people, processes, and technologies while supporting security and data privacy protections.
Recognizing this need, the EDM Council is proud to release DCAM v3 — a landmark update to the Data Management Capability Assessment Model, the globally recognized standard for best practices in data management and analytics.
DCAM v3: A New Era in Data Management
DCAM was first created over a decade ago by the EDM Council in collaboration with global data and data management experts to define the capabilities required for effective data management. Since its initial release in 2014, it has become the benchmark framework for organizations of all sizes and across all industries, providing a foundational roadmap to initiate, build, measure, and sustain a data management program and culture, and elevate the strategic contributions of their data practices.
With the launch of DCAM v3, organizations now have access to the most comprehensive, relevant, and practical guide to navigating modern data challenges.
Key Enhancements in DCAM v3:
- Expanded Support for AI and Cloud: Reflecting today’s realities, DCAM v3 introduces enhanced capabilities for cloud-native architectures, AI/ML integration, and modern data pipelines.
- Stronger Emphasis on Governance and Security: As data becomes more valuable — and more vulnerable — DCAM v3 brings heightened focus to data governance, privacy, and protection.
- Updated Regulatory Alignment: With regulations evolving rapidly, DCAM v3 helps to ensure that your data program is aligned with the latest global standards and compliance requirements.
- More Usable and Streamlined: DCAM v3 is thinner than previous versions, cleaner, and easier to navigate, offering a simplified and more intuitive user experience without sacrificing rigor or depth.
- Foundations for the future: DCAM v3 introduces a variety of new concepts, combined with existing best practices, form the foundation for upcoming enhancements like data culture and risk control, which are planned for future releases.
Built collaboratively over 18 months with input from hundreds of cross-industry data management practitioners drawn from the EDM Council membership community, DCAM v3 is more than an update — it’s a reflection of how the data landscape has transformed and how organizations must evolve to stay ahead.
Addressing Today’s Data Pain Points
DCAM v3 is engineered to help organizations tackle today’s most pressing data and data management challenges:
- Explosive Growth in Data: Data is growing exponentially in size, scope, and sources. DCAM provides a strategic framework to manage this growth with discipline and foresight.
- Inconsistent Terminology and Usage: When definitions and formats vary, collaboration breaks down. DCAM fosters shared understanding through a common data language and robust glossary standards.
- Insufficient Data Literacy: Employees throughout the organization need education and guidance regarding what data is relevant to their function and how to get it, use it, understand it and apply it. DCAM provides guidance to increase adoption and knowledge of data to glean greater outcomes.
- Regulatory Pressures: From GDPR to emerging AI regulations, data compliance is a moving target. DCAM helps organizations build the governance needed to stay compliant while reducing risk.
- AI and Digital Demands: AI initiatives and digital transformation demand high-quality, complete, governed, and secure data. DCAM helps organizations ensure that their data is not only available and accessible, but usable, trustworthy, and protected.
- Complex Data Environments: Distributed, hybrid environments increase complexity. DCAM helps unify data practices, processes and culture across business units, platforms, and geographies.
DCAM v3 in Action: Driving Real Outcomes
DCAM isn’t theory. It’s a practical toolset designed to deliver measurable results. Here’s what organizations gain from adopting and implementing DCAM v3:
- A Structured Framework for Improvement: Assess current capabilities, identify gaps, and build a strategic roadmap for advancing data maturity.
- Industry Benchmarking: Compare your data practices against peers and global standards, enabling informed prioritization and investment.
- Enhanced Collaboration: Facilitate alignment between data, IT, business, and compliance teams with a shared language and common goals.
- Regulatory Confidence: Ensure your data meets the standards and requirements for today’s evolving compliance landscape.
- A Stronger Data Culture: Lay the foundation for a culture where data is respected, trusted, and effectively used across the enterprise, driven by communication and collaboration.
The latest enhancements include new capabilities, components, and concepts:
- Enhanced Capabilities
- Change & Enablement
- Communications
- Data Education
- Business Glossary
- Metadata Management
- Data Requirements Management
- Data Development Life Cycle
- Data Provider Management
- Enhanced Components
- Business Data Knowledge (new component)
- Architecture consolidated into one component, combining the previously separate Business & Data Architecture and Data & Technology Architecture components
- Data Control Environment broadened to include Data Management Operations
DCAM v3 is better equipped to empower meaningful, scalable change that supports data management, business objectives and the organization’s mission.
A Foundation for Long-Term Success
True to its purpose, DCAM v3 is not a one-time initiative — it’s a lifecycle framework designed to support continuous improvement and progress. That’s why the EDM Council also created the Data Excellence Program, a structured path for organizations to achieve and gain recognition at the organizational level for data excellence. Given its role in driving best practices, DCAM serves as the Program’s backbone for defining and assessing data management capabilities and measuring participants’ progress in their journey towards long-term success and achieving sustained excellence.
The elements of the Data Excellence Program include:
- Periodic Assessment by professionals certified in DCAM by the EDM Council.
- Tailored Training for staff on DCAM and broader data skills, increasing knowledge and driving for better outcomes while supporting data culture.
- Action Plans to implement real change and address gaps.
- Checkpoint Meetings to ensure continued, steady progress.
- Benchmark Submissions to contribute DCAM assessment results to a growing Global Data Management Benchmark Repository of data maturity metrics. This real-time tool for EDM Council members will provide a basis for comparing progress to peer organizations.
This program transforms DCAM from a framework into a living, evolving discipline—enabling organizations to measure, refine, and lead in data management excellence, and to earn recognition for their commitment and progress.
Looking Ahead
DCAM v3 is scheduled for release in late June 2025, with training enrollment opening in Q3 2025. Future enhancements are already in motion, including indices that will translate assessment results into readiness levels for critical areas like data culture and risk control.
More than ever, organizations need a trusted foundation, defined by the professional data management community, for managing their data assets. With DCAM v3, the EDM Council continues to provide that foundation, and the leadership, collaboration, tools, and support to build upon it.
Final Thoughts: A Call to Action
In an era where data is both a competitive asset and a compliance requirement, only those organizations that manage it with rigor, purpose, and strategy will thrive. Best practices are not optional. They are the must-have blueprint for data-driven success.
DCAM v3 embodies that blueprint.
Whether you’re a financial institution responding to regulatory mandates, a healthcare provider navigating data privacy, or a technology company or function scaling AI applications, the DCAM v3 framework, along with the Data Excellence Program, provides the clarity, structure, and confidence for your organization’s data management practice.
Learn More
- Explore DCAM, and read the case studies.
- Learn more about the Data Excellence Program.
- DCAM and the Data Excellence Program are available to EDM Council member organizations. Visit the EDM Council website or contact the team to learn more or inquire about membership.
This quarter’s column contributed by:
Jim Halcomb, Chief Research & Development Officer, EDM Council
Jim Halcomb is a strategy, data management, and cybersecurity executive with 30 years of international business experience. Jim leads the Council’s Communities of Practice, Best Practices Frameworks (DCAM & CDMC) and Training.
