This can be
> compounded by non-technical issues such as data owners not seeing the
> information they actually have because they are blinded by their
> expectations of what it is "supposed" to be.
> 

Sometimes the data owners are better clued-in than the technicians. I 
remember a friend who was the IT director of a supermarket chain telling 
me (about 20 years ago, when data analytics had a different fashionable 
name) about a sales presentation he had just sat through telling him all the 
wonderful things he could do with the data from his tills. His remark: 
"What I really want to know is what the customer didn't buy because it 
wasn't on the shelves. They don't seem to realise that we haven't got 
that data."

Michael Kay
Saxonica