amenji.io

Data Governance Capabilities Should be Self-Reinforcing

Tue, 09 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

An organization may already have a data governance policy in place. It may already have a document for data inventory, its classification, its source systems, and its respective data owners. Yet the organization may still suffer from poor data governance, causing low trust in data. Why? Because those things may not be operationally connected.

The policy document may say sensitive data must be protected, but classification is not linked to access control to be seamlessly enforced. The governance committee may approve standards, but data assets get created faster than they are documented. The spreadsheet says a dataset exists, but analysts cannot find it, verify its lineage, or know whether it is safe to use. And data owners may be named in the spreadsheet, but incidents or any downstream concerns may not be routed back to the owners. Worst, there are no data owners.

AI and the Commons

Sun, 01 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Recently I stumbled upon a tweet by an open-source maintainer, ranting about AI and how it affects his ability to monetize his OSS project (emphasis mine):

All my new code will be closed-source from now on. I’ve contributed millions of lines of carefully written OSS code over the past decade, spent thousands of hours helping other people. If you want to use my libraries (1M+ downloads/month) in the future, you have to pay.

DFCE 2025: Regulation, Innovation, and Friction

Wed, 11 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Last week, I had the opportunity to attend DFCE 2025 organized by AITI. At the conference, I wore two hats from work: that of a data governance enabler and a data architect for our effort in migrating (and re-architecting) a data platform to the cloud. There are a lot of interesting topics covered, generally around data governance (specifically, the Personal Data Protection Order, PDPO) and, of course, AI, with optimism mixed with cautionary reminders.

Of Kind Chess and Wicked Programming: How AI Influences Our Creativity

Fri, 11 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Magnus Carlsen announced in a podcast that he would no longer defend the title he’d won in 2022 after consecutively remaining undefeated in the World Chess Championship since 2013. Many critics speculated he had lost his passion or was too afraid to lose to the next generation of players. About two years later, in March 2024, he announced the inaugural tournament of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour—a series of five major Chess960 tournaments held across different continents throughout 2025.

Masquerading Digitalization

Thu, 11 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Digitalization, or digital transformation, has long since become a key factor responsible for the progress and development of the world’s economies. “Every company is a technology company,” or variations of the phrase, is an oft-spoken mantra for highlighting the importance of digitalization to every organization, no matter the industry. Recently, the push for digital transformation is usually induced by the furor surrounding emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing, big data, and blockchain.

About

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

I’m Amirul Menjeni, based in Brunei 🇧🇳 — the small petrostate on Borneo that most people can’t find on a map.

I currently work on data architecture and governance at Brunei Shell Petroleum. Before that, I was a software engineer. I still think like one: data architecture and governance are, after all, software systems problems, plus the people.

This blog is where I work through ideas by writing them down. Most of what I write sits at the intersection of software, economics, and systems thinking. I tend to borrow ideas from one domain to make sense of problems in another.

Privacy, Analytics, and Data Use

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Last updated: April 11th, 2025

Hello! I’m Amirul Menjeni, and this is a personal blog run just by me.

Privacy wise, if you’re reading my blog, here’s what you should know:

Analytics

I use Plausible to understand how people use this site—like which pages are popular or what countries visitors come from.

Plausible is an open-source privacy-first analytics tool. It doesn’t use cookies, doesn’t track you across sites, and doesn’t collect any personal data. This allows me to get enough insights to improve my blog (and maybe writing!) without invading your privacy.

Projects

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

A short index of personal projects I am actively building or maintaining.

buildzr

buildzr.dev | github

buildzr is a Python DSL for Structurizr models and C4 architecture diagrams. It gives Python programmers a typed, programmable way to define software architecture models, relationships, views, styles, and exports as code.

It is listed in Structurizr community tooling documentation, along with the others.

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Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

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