Actian Study Finds Organizations Overestimate Data Governance Maturity, Posing Risk to AI Investments

ROUND ROCK, Texas, July 29, 2025 — Actian, the data division of HCLSoftware, today released findings from the Actian State of Data Governance Maturity 2025 research, revealing organizations significantly overestimate their data governance maturity despite widespread challenges.

In response to these findings, the company launched the Actian Confidata Index, an assessment tool that provides objective benchmarking and personalized recommendations to help organizations strengthen data governance and AI capabilities.

“Our global survey reveals a compelling paradox: AI acts as both a critical driver and a primary challenge for data governance,” said Emma McGrattan, CTO of Actian. “The Actian Confidata Index helps organizations find a starting point with an assessment and clear next steps to build strong data foundations and governance frameworks that enable AI success.”

The Data Maturity Disconnect

While organizations grapple with multiple complex data management challenges, strong data governance has become increasingly critical for making confident, data-driven decisions and ensuring AI initiatives are built on trusted, well-governed data. However, Actian’s research exposes a striking contradiction: 83% of organizations face data governance and compliance challenges, but they rate their data governance maturity at 4.13 out of 5 (where 5 is most mature). The overconfidence is most pronounced at the leadership level, where executives rate their organization’s data maturity 12% higher than operational managers who work with data daily.

This confidence-reality gap suggests organizations may be putting AI investments at risk. Without strong governance, organizations may face regulatory violations, legal penalties, inappropriate data exposures, reputational damage, financial losses, and AI models trained on biased or incomplete data.

Research Shows Broad Data Management Challenges

The Actian State of Data Governance Maturity 2025 research surveyed 600+ enterprise data professionals from organizations with annual revenues exceeding USD $1 billion across 12 industries and seven countries. Key findings highlight the scope of the challenges and expected benefits:

• No single issue emerges as the dominant data management challenge, which range from scale and complexity (89%), governance and compliance (83%), access and security (79%), quality and trust (76%), and skills and culture (75%).
• Organizations are prioritizing data governance to improve data quality (61%) and implement AI (58%).
• 93% of respondents expect governance improvements to significantly enhance AI capabilities.
• Expected benefits include improved trust in data and decisions (93%), accelerated speed to market (89%), improved time to value (88%), and improved business results (88%).

Actian Confidata Index Provides Objective Benchmarking

The data from the Actian research serves as the benchmark foundation for the Actian Confidata Index. Developed in collaboration with research firm BARC, the 20-minute online assessment helps organizations understand their data maturity against the same 600+ enterprise leaders from the study.

Organizations evaluate themselves using a 1 (least mature) to 5 (most mature) scale across eight critical dimensions:

• Data strategy – Alignment with business objectives & AI initiatives
• Data governance – Framework for compliance, accountability & risk reduction
• Data culture & organizational readiness – Data literacy & AI adoption capabilities
• Data management – Effectiveness in structuring, securing & governing data assets
• Data architecture & integration – Scalability & interoperability of data infrastructure
• Data quality & AI governance – How data quality supports AI & advanced analytics
• Data operations – Efficiency in managing data lifecycle for agility & scalability
• Value realization – Effectiveness in measuring & maximizing business impact

Based on their scores, organizations receive personalized recommendations to improve their data capabilities and AI readiness, helping them move from overconfidence to genuine preparedness.

“Organizations with genuine data maturity build environments where business users can confidently access and trust data assets, supported by governance frameworks enabling self-service analytics and AI integration,” said Dr. Carsten Bange, CEO at BARC. “Without an honest assessment of current capabilities, companies risk pursuing AI strategies that lack the governance foundation needed for success.”

Availability

The free assessment is available immediately on the Actian Confidata Index website. For more information about the Actian State of Data Governance Maturity 2025 research, review the blog, “Inside Actian’s Research: Why Data Governance Threatens AI Success.”

About Actian

Actian empowers enterprises to confidently manage and govern data at scale. Actian data management and data intelligence solutions help streamline complex data environments and accelerate the delivery of AI-ready data. Designed to be flexible, Actian solutions integrate seamlessly and perform reliably across on-premises, cloud and hybrid environments. Learn more about Actian, the data division of HCLSoftware, at actian.com.

Source: Actian