Independent advisory for AI readiness, trusted data, and practical governance.

Rachael Fay is a data strategy and governance leader with more than 23 years of experience helping Australian government and other complex, regulated organisations turn data into something they can trust and act on. Data Quality Advisory brings that experience to the question now sitting in front of most leadership teams: is the organisation genuinely ready for AI?

Working across Australian Federal and State Government, Rachael has designed and embedded the enterprise data strategies, governance frameworks, operating models, and data quality practices that determine whether data can be relied on. Her work spans the full set of DAMA DMBoK disciplines, from governance, data quality, and metadata through to architecture, security, and privacy, always delivered inside the security, privacy, and legislative constraints that regulated organisations operate under.

That foundation is exactly what AI now depends on. Rachael has hands-on experience delivering machine learning and AI use cases, and advising on the safe and responsible adoption of AI and automation, keeping it aligned with privacy, compliance, and security obligations. It is first-hand experience of the gap between AI ambition and AI readiness, and of what it takes to close it.

Rachael is a trusted advisor to executives and Chief Data Officers, known for taking an organisation from an honest view of its current state through to a clear target state and a sequenced, fundable roadmap. She is currently authoring Practical Data Governance for Government: From Strategy to Implementation, a practitioner's guide drawn from more than two decades of public sector work.