One of the three most important jobs of a Data Governance program is to help resolve data-related issues. These may be conflicting data definitions, data usage concerns, or problems with how data is sourced, how it is integrated, how it is protected, or a myriad of other issues.

Data Governance programs are generally structured to allow an orderly and predictable issue escalation path for data issues that pulls together the right stakeholders at the right time with the right research and analysis, so they can make a decision that is right for the enterprise.

The DGI Data Governance Framework includes “Resolving Issues” as a key Governance process. Of course, every organization will decide how much structure and formality to bring to the process of resolving data-related issues.

Ideally, this process should be standardized, documented, and repeatable. It should be crafted in such a way to support regulatory and compliance requirements for Data Management, Privacy, Security, and Access Management. Record-keeping should provide a clear history of which stakeholders were involved in resolving an issue, what resources/analysis were used, and what alternatives were considered.

It’s essential that Data Governance and Stewardship program facilitators avoid being “caught up” in politics. It’s our jobs to acknowledge the realities of the situations we work with, while avoiding taking sides or engaging in behaviors that could be perceived as favoring one set of data stakeholders at the expense of others.

Goals and Principles for Data Governance

What do you want Data Governance to accomplish? Regardless of the focus of your program, chances are you hope to accomplish the following universal goals for Data Governance programs: Goal – Enable better decision-making Goal – Reduce operational friction Goal –...

Governance and Alignment

Data Governance is a balancing act. On the one hand, you need to exert control over how groups create data, manage data, and use data. On the other hand, you need to promote appropriate levels of flexibility. You need to ensure that data-related efforts support the...

Defining Data Governance

How you define your program will influence your ability to manage it — to keep all participants on focus, in sync, and striving toward the same goals.

Engaging Stewards and Stakeholders

It seems like there are two types of Data Governance and Stewardship programs: Thriving ones, with highly-engaged stakeholders, and Ones whose futures are in question, since stakeholders and stewards are only sporadically involved or give only weak support to the...

Focus Areas for Data Governance: Data Warehouses and Business Intelligence (BI)

This type of program typically comes into existence in conjunction with a specific data warehouse, data mart, or BI tool. These types of efforts require tough data-related decisions, so organizations often implement governance to help make initial decisions, to...

Defining Organizational Structures

There is no single “right” way to organize Data Governance and Stewardship. Some organizations have distinct Data Governance programs. Others embed Data Governance activities into Data Quality or Master Data Management programs.