Data Governance

Data Governance
The idea of data governance is intended to put some structure around how data is managed and used in an organization. By establishing rules and processes around a variety of data-related operations and decisions

What does Data governance do?
Four major functions of data governance
– Establish and maintain standards
– Establish accountability for data
– Manage and communicate data development
– Provide information about the data environment

A. Establish and maintain standards
A primary role of data governance is to establish and maintain standards around data. This takes a few different forms
1. Identifying what sources are preferred for each type of data or metric used in an organization.
2. There is an idea called MDM (Master Data Management) which identifies the most critical data within the organization and ensures there is a clear understanding of where that data should come from and where it should be stored.
3. A related idea is that of common reference data. Reference data provides sets of allowable values for certain data attributes or provides additional descriptive information about key ideas in the company’s data environment. Sometimes this data is loosely referred to as look-up data or dimensional data. Data governance helps to ensure that reference data is complete and accurate
4. Establish common definitions and calculations.
The same term might have different meanings across the organization and different teams might use slightly different calculations to arrive at the same metric. Governance helps to ensure that everyone is on the same page and does things the same way.
5. Set standards for data access and compliance. A governance process can help to find who should have access to data under what circumstances and is often applied in support of more general Sarbanes oxilly, or sox controls and data privacy concerns.

B. Establish Accountability for Data
Organizations assign responsibility for specific data domains to individuals called Data Stewards.

Data stewards are accountable for ensuring that their area has the correct definitions and are responsible for the overall state of their data domain. Governance can also help identify who is responsible for addressing various types of data quality issues.

C. Manage and communicate data development.
Governance can help by providing a process for vetting, assessing, and prioritizing which data projects are undertaken, usually by rationalizing those projects against the overall business priorities of the enterprise.
Because data environments are constantly evolving, there also needs to be some mechanism for letting the users of the data know when new data is added or some change or improvement is made. A well-structured data governance approach can facilitate communication about data and make sure everyone is informed and aware of the changes.

D. Provide Information about the Data environment
– Metadata management, which aids in the management of metadata, or data about data.
– Documenting standard definitions and calculations to the enterprise
– Provide information about the data and metric lineage, which traces where data elements come from, or maintain a history of changes made to a data environment.

To be continued….