La Cantine pour tous' recipe for optimized data governance: a case study

This blog post presents La Cantine pour tous' approach to implementing improved data governance that meets their needs and operational reality. This includes managing, protecting and regulating the organization's data to ensure its quality, security and efficient use.

La Cantine pour tous has made fighting food insecurity its mission. This non-profit organization is facing an exponential increase in data collected, with nearly four hundred thousand meals distributed during the 2022-2023 school year.

With so much data comes great responsibility. Every day, organizations make decisions about the data they collect, manage, share or use. These decisions help them to realize the full value of their data, but they also entail risks.

Data security and management have become priorities for La Cantine pour tous, which places great value on protecting the confidentiality of its customers and improving its programs. It was essential for the organization to review its data governance practices and implement sustainable tools and processes to support its growth.

"The new tools and processes implemented by La Cantine pour tous now make it possible to visualize information in the form of a dashboard and effectively monitor the progress of operations in the various programs. Ensuring data security and confidentiality was also a core concern for the organization."

To achieve this vision, La Cantine pour tous benefited from targeted support from Open North: a non-profit organization that promotes the responsible and efficient use of data and technology to advance the common good.

Reinforcing La Cantine pour tous' actions to tackle food insecurity

Allocating resources to review its data governance strategy provided La Cantine pour tous with a chance to boost its efforts in tackling food insecurity and improving customer service.

The data management tool used by the organization had significant limitations, given its growth and the nature of the data it processed. Since the non-profit handles sensitive personal information for a vulnerable clientele, including children and seniors, data security is a crucial concern. Data collected includes first and last names, meals chosen, schools, email addresses and price paid. Additionally, the expansion of La Cantine pour tous' activities and customer base has led to a significant uptick in the volume of data processed.

The efforts made by La Cantine pour tous to identify gaps in its data governance and implement a new strategy are already bearing fruit. The organization now has an overview of each school's budget situation at a more regular frequency, which improves their ability to monitor overall program performance.

Additionally, fostering team involvement in data management issues has allowed for the implementation of new expertise and tools. The training sessions and awareness initiatives have played a vital role in sustaining and institutionalizing the practices and tools implemented.

The initiative is proving beneficial for the Montreal-based organization, which currently employs 19 people and has great development perspectives as it continues its fight against food insecurity.

Florian Maysonnave, Digital Project Manager at La Cantine pour tous, shares his approach and thoughts on improving the organization's data governance in this case study: Data storage, processing and visualization: La Cantine pour tous' Approach to Informed Data Governance

About the Montréal in Common Data Governance Workstream

As the lead of the Data Governance Workstream within Montréal in Common, Open North proposes a data governance journey to the innovation community in order to progressively operationalize the principles of the City of Montreal's Digital Data Charter. The program explicitly focuses on collecting, sharing and leveraging data to inform collective and individual decision-making.

Montréal in Common brings together an innovation community led by the City of Montréal, whose partners are experimenting with solutions in food access, mobility and municipal regulations in a desire to rethink the metropolis. Thirteen projects are being implemented as part of Montréal in Common thanks to the $50 million prize awarded to the city by the Government of Canada as part of the Smart Cities Challenge.

Did you find this article interesting? Would you like to know more about data governance? Not sure where to start? Find other resources, free training courses and more on our website: https://opennorth.ca/

Authors: La Cantine pour tous, Open North

Research and editorial contributions: Marie Plamondon, Alexandra Gellé, Jérémy Diaz, and Florian Maysonnave (La Cantine pour tous)

We extend our thanks to all our partners and clients, whose work continuously expands and evolves our understanding of data governance and its best practices.