Richard Y. Wang is the founder and executive director of the Chief Data Officer and Information Quality (CDOIQ) Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
From the early days of his academic career, Wang published many books and research articles on information quality.
[5][6][7][8] More importantly, he brought together a community of researchers and practitioners centering on the vision that information quality is essential for organizational performance and prosperity.
[11] Wang has been a strong advocate of the idea that improving and maintaining information quality must be in the purview of the top management.
[9] This Annual Symposium has facilitated the exchange and dissemination of knowledge, skills, and innovations among Chief Data Officers and "de facto" CDOs—high-level executives who make critical decisions regarding how their organization leverage rapidly growing massive volume of data available to these organizations.
Through his work in academia and both the public and private sectors, Wang championed and led the movement to establish the role of CDOs in all organizations.
In 2021, President Biden also issued the Presidential Memorandum on Restoring Trust in Government Through Scientific Integrity and Evidence-Based Policymaking and reaffirmed the central role of CDOs to "incorporate scientific-integrity principles consistent with this memorandum into agencies’ data governance and evaluation approaches.