44%
integration cost-savings
35%
increased customer service efficiency
Billions
of records processed
As Brazil’s electric power regulator, ANEEL (Agência Nacional de Energia Elétrica) oversees the generation, transmission, distribution, and trading of electricity over the market which provides electricity for more than 100 million consumers. Setting an example for government agencies across the country, ANEEL joined forces with Informatica to centralize, enrich, and improve the quality and governance of its data. A data-driven approach to decision-making promises to improve service quality for every Brazilian, while potentially reducing costs for the organization and the Brazilian consumers in the long term.
“Data is the lifeblood of ANEEL. 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.”
Powering Better Decisions
ANEEL’s mandate is enormous. Brazil’s electric power regulator manages more than 100 energy distribution companies, 380 transmission companies over, 5,000 state-level generation facilities and 2 million consumers with distributed generation, all of which work together to power the lives of 213 million Brazilian citizens. The stakes are high, demand is constant, and the cost of suboptimal strategies can be enormous. At the center of ANEEL’s data operations sit Chief Data Officer, Shirley Pimenta, and her team.
“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.”
“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. 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.”
Getting Data Quality Right
Ready to modernize, centralize, and gain more control over its data, ANEEL turned to Informatica. Since 2021, the agency has been cataloging virtually all the data in its database. Its data stewards immediately began enriching the catalog with valuable metadata to improve classification and search. ANEEL now holds more than 230,000 assets in its data catalog, and that figure grows each day.
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.”
Centralizing Governance
As a government agency, ANEEL takes data governance seriously, not just to meet the strict requirements of Brazil’s General Data Protection Law (LGPD) but also to give citizens confidence that their personal information is being handled with the utmost care and respect.
To that end, ANEEL is working with Informatica to update and centralize its approach to data governance. Legacy processes had left ANEEL’s data in siloes, with each generation, transmission, and distribution company in its network treating its information differently.
Informatica is now helping ANEEL to break down these siloes, digitize its processes, and make its data operations more transparent for every stakeholder. ANEEL has also gained expanded control over data access since working with Informatica. For instance, its infrastructure team can easily mask consumers’ personal data so that only stakeholders with the appropriate access rights can view sensitive details.
“Informatica has shown us the light when it comes to data governance. By digitizing our processes, we’ve gained the visibility and transparency we need to control our data, reduce our risk exposure, and protect the interests of every Brazilian energy user,” says Governance Analyst, Luciano Grossi.
Leading by Example
Though its transformation with Informatica has only begun, ANEEL’s successes have already drawn the attention of other public sector organizations in Brazil, from the Ministry of Education to the Internal Revenue Service. Leading by example, ANEEL has already shared its story with more than 30 of its fellow institutions, many of which are considering a data transformation of their own. From the keys to modernizing its data practices, to tips on strengthening decision making with better data quality and governance, ANEEL’s transparency and guidance have set it apart in Brazil.
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.”
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