Data Architect

Mission

• Provide dedicated data architect expertise, over a limited period of time, to analyse the data landscape of WBE [Wallonia-Brussels Education is the organising authority for official education of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation], produce the mapping and conceptual and logical modelling, and co-construct with the CLIENT and WBE teams the target data architecture as well as its implementation trajectory.
• The mission is a data architecture and scoping mission. It produces models, reasoned options, documented decisions and an actionable roadmap.
• The Data Architect analyzes the existing situation, models the domain, instructs and argues the data architecture options, and derives a prioritized trajectory. He works in support of business analysts and enterprise architects, from whom he takes the business framework to translate it into requirements and data models, and in permanent articulation with solution architects, who are responsible for the application application.

Within the perimeter

• WBE Data Landscape Diagnostics: Sources, Flows, Repositories, Pain Points
• Conceptual and logical modeling of the domain's structuring business objects.
• Identify master data, master systems (SoR), and data ownership rules.
• Formulation of data architecture principles and rules applicable to the program.
• Construction, as a team, of target architecture options and decision instruction.
• Governance prerequisites necessary for the adoption of the architecture.
• Prioritized trajectory, work packages and transition architectures.

Collaboration

The service provider will work in conjunction with other key business lines:

Activities

Framing and alignment

• Facilitate workshops with business analysts and the program team.
• Rely on the business capabilities and processes identified by business analysts and enterprise architects, and derive the data objects that support them.
• Formulate the data architecture principles applicable to the programme and align them with the CLIENT Corporate Guiding Principles.

Analysis of the existing situation (AS-IS)

• Inventory the data sources of the organising authority: applications, repositories, databases, files, exchanges with administrations and establishments.
• Map current flows: producers, consumers, frequencies, exchange mechanisms, dependencies.
• Identify pain points: silos, redundancies, re-keying, latency, quality defects, ownerless areas.

Domain Modeling

• Establish the conceptual and then logical model of WBE's structuring business objects (students, staff, establishments, locations, teaching structures, etc. — to be confirmed with the business).
• Identify master data, designate master systems, and clarify data ownership rules.
• Produce the domain data dictionary and associated quality rules.

Building the target architecture

• To instruct the possible paradigms (data hub, lakehouse, federated mesh-type approach, virtualization) and compare them with regard to the context, constraints and resources of WBE and CLIENT.
• Confronting these options with enterprise architects, solution architects and the CLIENT data competence center: the target is not fixed a priori and must result from this collective work.
• Establish the rules for the use of exchange and exposure patterns (API, event, replication, virtualization, analytical feed): which pattern for which class of need and under what conditions. The choice of components and their implementation per application is the responsibility of the solution architects.
• Position the target architecture in relation to the CLIENT's shared bases and services and the company's data strategy.
• Translate the constraints of security, protection of personal data, sovereignty and digital sobriety into enforceable architectural rules.
• Ensure that the chosen architecture does not close analytical and AI uses (quality, traceability, accessibility of data), without pre-empting use cases.

Data governance — prerequisites

• Define the minimum governance foundations necessary for the adoption of the architecture: roles (owner, data steward), instances, decision-making processes.
• Specify the expected metadata repository and documented catalog, as well as control of access rights.
• Describe the practical implementation of the "only once" principle on the WBE perimeter.

Trajectory and transfer

• Divide the target into coherent batches and define the intermediate transition data architectures.
• Prioritize the roadmap based on business value and risk, consistent with the program schedule.
• Ensure the transfer of knowledge to the CLIENT and WBE teams, so that the deliverables remain usable after the end of the mission. Ad hoc expert support to the teams remains possible for the duration of the mission, without replacing the roles listed in point 3.2.

Behavioural skills

• Ability to work in a team with business analysts, enterprise architects, and solution architects, and turn their framing into actionable data material.
• Ability to propose a well-argued position rather than a catalogue of options, and to defend it before a decision-making body.
• Ability, symmetrically, to be challenged: to make a recommendation evolve in the light of the real constraints of CLIENT and WBE, without emptying it of its substance.
• Ability to popularize architectural choices for business and management interlocutors.
• Editorial quality: the deliverables must be readable, structured and directly reusable by CLIENT and WBE after the end of the mission.
• Pivotal posture between business, technology and governance.