What is data governance?
In its simplest form, data governance refers to the structure for decision-making and authority for data and data-related subjects.
Data is one of the most valuable assets organizations possess, and data governance ought to be of concern to any entity involved in the creation, collection, processing, manipulation, storage, or retirement of data. A system of data governance should cover the delegation of decision-making power, accountabilities, practices, possible actions, and outcomes, all while defining what is permissible within an organization.
Data governance can also refer to the rules, regulations, and enforcement protocols for the protection and security of data. Of course, the scale and complexity of the data governance program will vary based on not only the size of the organization, but also the size and complexity of the data, and the dependency of the organization on that data.
Data stakeholders are those with decision-making authority and responsibility for data. This can include all individuals involved: IT/technical responsible for producing the relevant data, data managers or stewards who own, manage, and govern the data for use, and end business users who consume the data for various purposes. Data stakeholders are also responsible for resolving issues pertaining to data governance such as monitoring and evaluation.
Developing a formal data governance framework can aid with the communication and management of complicated issues of data as they arise in an organization. A good data governance framework supports decision making by providing clarity of thought and purpose to stakeholders in authority positions. It can also enhance horizontal communication between an organization’s various entities and disciplines, such as development, compliance, management, and IT.
Data governance tools
Data profiling and data quality underpin all successful data governance programs. You can’t govern data that you don’t understand, so knowing the profile of your data is critical. It is also important to know the provenance and lineage of your data -- where did it come from, and what changes have been made to it along the way. This can be challenging if you are pulling from many data sources, blending that data together, and leveraging it in various systems, including the cloud.
Likewise, you only want to make decisions -- or report on industry regulations -- with data you trust to be valid, accurate and fit-for-purpose. That’s where a robust data quality solution is needed.
How Precisely can help
Our data governance solution helps you accelerate insights while reducing risk with streamlined, effective, and agile data governance. With The Data Integrity Suite’s Data Governance service, you can leverage our Data Governance service, built on the Data Integrity Foundation.
The Data Integrity Suite Foundation empowers customers to further enhance the value of their data governance program with our interoperable suite services, such as the Data Quality service to improve the quality of the data; Data Observability service to receive proactive alerts of unexpected changes, or Geo Addressing service to enrich the governed data with location-based context.