General Motors doesn't police metadata quality — they gamify it. By deploying metadata completeness scores in their catalog with clear guidance on how to reach 80 points, they transformed governance from a compliance burden into something engineering teams compete to win at, especially for high-risk data sources with PII or SPI that require higher standards.
Key takeaways:
Gamification works better than policing — teams compete to have the best scores and show off high-quality datasets
Clear standards matter: publish exactly what metadata is required to hit minimum thresholds (like 80 points)
Scores create transparency without judgment — it's not "good or bad," it's "here's where you are and how to improve"
High-risk data sources with PII/SPI require higher standards, which scoring systems make explicit and measurable
Engineering teams naturally want to be the best — scoring taps into that competitive energy to drive adoption
