What is Data Governance?

What is Data Governance?

Data governance is a requirement in today’s fast-moving and highly competitive enterprise environment. Now that organizations have the opportunity to capture massive amounts of diverse internal and external data, they need a discipline to maximize their value, manage risks, and reduce cost.

Data governance is a collection of processes, roles, policies, standards, and metrics that ensure the effective and efficient use of information in enabling an organization to achieve its goals. It establishes the processes and responsibilities that ensure the quality and security of the data used across a business or organization. Data governance defines who can take what action, upon what data, in what situations, using what methods.

A well-crafted data govenance stretegy is fundamental for any organization that works with big data , and will explain how your business benefits from consistent, common processes and responsibilities. Business drivers highlight what data needs to be carefully controlled in your data governance strategy and the benefits expected from this effort. This strategy will be the basis of your data governance framework.

For example, if a business driver for your data governance strategy is to ensure the privacy of healthcare-related data, patient data will need to be managed securely as it flows through your business. Retention requirements (e.g. history of who changed what information and when) will be defined to ensure compliance with relevant government requirements, such as the GDPR.

Data governance ensures that roles related to data are clearly defined, and that responsibility and accountability are agreed upon across the enterprise. A well-planned data governance framework covers strategic, tactical, and operational roles and responsibilities.

Data Governance is Not Data Management

Data Governance is Not Master Data Management

Data Governance is Not Data Stewardship