Understanding and Achieving Data Governance
01/31/24
Data governance is not new, but with artificial adoption on the rise, the spotlight is shining heavily on it. Data governance is the process of setting internal standards and data policies that apply to how data is gathered, stored, processed, and disposed of. It governs user access for specific data and determines what data is included.
Here are a few reasons your organization should take data governance seriously:
- Accuracy & Consistency: Ensures the data your business is using is accurate and consistent across all departments.
- Security & Compliance: To meet regulatory requirements and data privacy laws, data must be secure and managed properly to be compliant.
- Improved decision making: Making key decisions needs to happen based on accurate, consistent, and reliable data.
- Operational Efficiency: You can streamline operations by having a set of rules and procedures around managing data.
- Trust & Reputation: When clients trust their data is professionally managed and secured, it is good for your reputation, therefore your business also.
Achieving data governance is not a painless process, but here is a roadmap to help you understand the steps you should go about to do so:
- Set Clear Objectives: It is important to first understand why you are implementing data governance such as for compliance, improved data quality, or some other reason? The goal with why is to let it guide your strategy.
- Establish a Data Governance Team: The key to success here is to have a mix of stakeholders with representation from each department within the company.
- Develop Policies & Procedures: This includes rules around how data should be managed, including how it is collected, stored, and accessed, and by whom.
- Implement Data Governance Tools: Select a software tool that can help manage and monitor your data to help enforce the policies you set.
- Training & Education: Start with educating on the importance of data governance and then move to how to follow the policies and procedures you internally put in place. Implement on-going training to help users keep up with any changes.
- Monitor & Improve: It is not a one-time activity. You must continually monitor your data, make necessary improvements along the way, and enforce your policies and procedures to have effective data governance.
This is not an overnight process. It takes time and commitment, but the payoff in the end is worth it. Data is one of your businesses most valuable assets. Protect it at all costs.
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