Demystifying Data Governance: Practical Information for Technical Teams

Organizations are increasingly recognizing the importance of robust data governance to ensure data quality, security, and usability throughout its lifecycle. Despite its apparent simplicity, many organizations struggle to implement effective data governance strategies into their business processes.

What is Data Governance?

If you look up the term in Wikipedia, it states, “Data management principles that enable organizations to ensure high quality data throughout the lifecycle of the data and make sure it’s secure along the way.” This seems very simple and obvious, so why do so many organizations struggle with their data governance journey? 

How to Get Started with Data Governance

Avoid Overcomplicating It.

Organizations tend to get lost and lose focus, they overcomplicate it. It really boils down to people, processes, and technology, and making those things work together. The key is the people. If you implement data governance policies that make it difficult for people to do their daily job, they will find ways around those policies and controls. 

People tend to think of an overabundance of red tape and bottlenecks when they think about data governance, when really, it’s about supplying trustworthy, high-quality data that is easily available to do their daily jobs. So, right at the start there is a shift in mindset that needs to happen.

Identify your goals. 

The best way to get started is to identify your goals. Most organizations skip this step and immediately look for a product that will “do data governance” for them. Finding a product should be one of the last steps. How do you know if a product will work for your organization if you haven’t identified any goals?

Get executive buy in.

If there is no support from leadership, it sends the message that it is not important. Without executive leadership, most data governance journeys end before they ever have a chance to get started.

Define roles and responsibilities. 

This is critical as not everyone uses the data in the same way. A finance person will use data very differently than a human resources person. Identifying personas, and how they consume data, will help improve your organization’s overall data maturity. 

Identifying who is responsible for the data is also important. If your organization is planning on making business decisions based on your data, then having owners clearly defined will only help with improving data quality. When bad data is found, if no one is responsible, it will propagate and lead to poor decision making. 

In addition to identifying personas for how data will be consumed, there are some standard data governance roles within your data governance team that need to be defined. 

• Data administrators will be responsible overseeing the entire data governance journey, ensuring useful, quality data that can be used for decision making. 
• Data stewards are typically from the business side and are responsible for curating data assets, defining access policies, and optimizing workflows and communications. They usually act as a liaison between business and IT to ensure high quality data. They are also responsible for accuracy of the data catalog and business glossary.
• Data custodians are the technical counterpart to the data stewards. Typically, these are database administrators and data engineers. They are responsible for the safe storage and movement of data throughout your organization. Data custodians understand data security and how the data flows through your organization, which is helpful when trying to identify data lineage.
• Data Users the people who must use data daily to get their job done. 

Benefits of Data Governance

As with anything in life, if there is no benefit from doing something, why bother. So, ensuring everyone in the organization understands the benefits of data governance is critical. If we revisit the definition of data governance, it’s about enabling organizations to ensure high quality data throughout the lifecycle of the data. 

Why do we need high quality data? Because we want better decision making. If there are policies, processes, and standards in place to collect, manage, and store data, we can make better decisions. 

Organizations also benefit from data governance by ensuring proper use of data throughout the organization by setting data access control policies, defining retention and deletion policies, and improving consistency and confidence in risk assessment. This enables true data democratization and allows your teams to effectively collaborate and reduce data silos. It also helps with regulatory compliance and data protection laws.

Common Barriers to Success

There will always be barriers to implementing good data governance, but the ones I see most frequently and lead to the most failed data governance efforts are: 

·      No executive sponsorship

·      Key roles and responsibilities are not defined

·      No funding

·      Resistance from data users

·      Lack of education and training

Conducting a Maturity Assessment

To overcome these barriers, start by assessing your organization’s data maturity level. Determine if you have master data management in place, as making your data consistent for use across the organization is critical for effective analysis. Evaluate your current data quality—if it is poor, implementing data governance without addressing these issues may only amplify the existing problems. Tackling data quality issues promptly is essential.

Next, ensure your organization has a communication strategy. Implementing data governance in isolation is not viable; clear communication with both business and technical audiences is key. These teams must collaborate to achieve the identified goals.

Additionally, have a plan for educating your organization. New processes will likely be required as part of the data governance effort, and ensuring everyone understands not only the “how” but also the “why” is critical to success. When a data governance tool is selected, it is equally important to educate users on how to effectively utilize the tool.

Choosing a Data Governance Framework

Frameworks are the “How” of implementing data governance. It should be easy to use and enable better decision making. It should also lead to building better standard, repeatable processes and reduce costs while increasing effectiveness, and it should do this transparently. 

There are several existing frameworks today that will help you get started. The Data Governance Institute (DGI) is one of the oldest and best sources for best practices and guidance. There is also the Data Management Association International (DAMA) group. 

They are a global, vendor independent, association that is dedicated to advancing the concepts of data management. Both organizations provide framework resources. 

If the existing frameworks from these organizations don’t meet your needs, you can always create your own. If your organization does decide to create their own framework, be sure to revisit your organization’s definition of data governance. By understanding your organization’s purpose for data governance, including defining what data assets will be covered, it should lead to the fostering of data sharing and collaboration organization wide.

Your framework should also identify and define data domains. Data domains are typically aligned with business areas of your organization. As part of identifying and defining data domains, you will also need to identify the owners and consumers of those domains and understand how data is generated and where the data lives and how it flows through your organization.

Once your data domains have been identified and defined, validate and document everything about the data. Include where the data originates from, what it means, how it helps domains meet their goals, and if it supports your organization’s business goals.

Finally, there’s security. All organizations have sensitive data so conducting a data security and risk assessment for each data domain will be crucial. Look at existing data access policies, who is allowed to access the data and why. Ensure your policies mitigate risk without creating access and collaboration bottlenecks.

Ready to Elevate Your Strategy?

Fortified Data’s consulting services are here to help you navigate the complexities of data governance. Our experts will partner with you to build a robust strategy tailored to your organization’s unique needs. Contact us today to start your journey toward better data and better decisions!