After the first cleanse, sponsors treat MDM as finished. How should the roadmap be framed instead?

After the first cleanse, sponsors who treat MDM as finished should be reframed: MDM is an ongoing program of rules, stewardship, and integration—not a one-time cleanse project. Civic data drifts continuously as residents move and systems change. Shutting down stewardship and matching once the first load completes invites rapid decay. Declaring victory and freezing all rule changes forever prevents adaptation. Replacing the hub annually with a fresh unmanaged extract from every source recreates chaos under a new label. Exam caveat: MDM is a sustained operating program, not a one-off cleanup project. Operational check: fund ongoing steward capacity, schedule rule-tuning cycles, monitor duplicate and completeness KPIs monthly, and include MDM in the municipal operating budget—not only the capital project that performed the first load. Present the ongoing-program roadmap at steering so sponsors do not defund stewardship after the initial cleanse celebration. Keep verification evidence with the municipal runbook so audits can prove the chosen control was applied as designed and that rejected alternatives would have left city services exposed to the failure modes described above. Keep verification evidence with the municipal runbook so audits can prove the chosen control was applied as designed and that rejected alternatives would have left city services exposed to the failure modes described above.