ANEEL Energizes Brazil with Enhanced Data Quality and Governance

“Data is the lifeblood of ANEEL,” says Pimenta. “From power grid performance to project management within our organization, to our customer services, the data we collect fuels decision making across ANEEL, which is why we are committed to managing it to the highest standard.”

In practice, that means collecting, cataloging, and validating the quality of data that ANEEL receives from the thousands of generations, transmission, and distribution companies within Brazil’s energy network. Each of these organizations uses its own IT systems and data management tools, which presents challenges when it comes to data consistency, quality, and governance. As Pimenta explains, this disjointed approach to data management leads to interoperability issues between IT systems, making it difficult for ANEEL’s stakeholders to tackle critical decisions with accurate information.

“When you operate on a national scale, even a small error in the way we store, process, or use data can compound quickly and lead to extreme revenue losses,” says Pimenta. “There’s a lot riding on our team’s ability to handle data quickly and accurately, and manual processes were no longer fit for the job.”

Pimenta’s team has also enriched more than 60 database catalog processes, such as transactional data collected from market players like the Nacional Operator Grid and Electric Energy Trading Chamber, data domains produced daily by the execution of automated working processes, master data related to market players, contracts, and so on, benefiting business processes such as overseeing the building of new power grid and transmission power lines and calculate tariffs for distribution services.

Building on this improved data structure and classification, Informatica is now helping ANEEL to enhance its data quality. During the pilot phase of its implementation, ANEEL’s data queries became faster and more accurate than ever. Processes that would take months are now automatically using Informatica data quality tools. For instance, the Electric Sector Analytical Intelligence System (SIASE) was previously not integrated into ANEEL's processes due to data quality issues. Regular database query tools would take several days – or even months – to perform the necessary data quality processes, but now, with automation provided by Informatica Data Quality, the SIASE database can be seamlessly integrated.

The Informatica pilot also delivered promising results for ANEEL’s data querying and reporting capabilities. Where IT teams would previously search for individual data points in a SQL database, note the figure, and simply report it back to their stakeholders, they can now create graphical representations of their results that add context to this information. The team at ANEEL now has the ability to track and monitor the complete path of data as it travels through the organization's databases. This includes gaining visibility into the intricate process of data transformation and understanding how it is eventually published in the form of business intelligence (BI) reports. By having a clear view of this entire data processing pipeline, ANEEL's team can ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information presented in BI reports or Open Data, and identify any potential issues or inconsistencies that may arise during the process. Previously, the IT department relied on personnel that had previous knowledge of the data to address specific inquiries, often without receiving the desired or accurate responses. Not only does this approach make results easier to interpret, it gives ANEEL’s stakeholders a more complete picture of the information they need to power their decision making.

These changes have also driven a cultural transformation at ANEEL. The digitization of its data environment with Informatica has fostered better data practices across its agency network. Visibility into data operations at the state level allows ANEEL’s central team to identify errors and advise individual agencies on how best to address their performance issues. This virtuous loop will improve decision making and bring consistency to ANEEL’s operations across Brazil while strengthening the relationships between its internal teams. For instance, with the results of data quality pilot were identified some distribution companies’ registers which needed to be adjusted. So, those companies also had to improve their data quality to accomplish ANEEL’s requirement of data quality.

“It’s impossible to overstate the value of getting your data right,” says Deputy Chief Data Officer, Luiz Santos. “With Informatica, our teams make well-informed decisions the first time around, which means better results for consumers, faster.”

Anchored by Informatica’s powerful suite of technologies, it continues to surge ahead on its journey.

“A major data transformation requires the best technologies on the market, and according to Gartner, Informatica comes first in data catalogs, data quality, and data governance,” says Pimenta. “It’s hard to argue with that endorsement, and even harder to argue with the results our partnership has delivered to date.”