This type of program typically comes into existence because of concerns about Data Information Security controls, or compliance. Compliance, in this context, may refer to regulatory compliance, contractual compliance, or compliance with internal requirements.

Focus Areas for Data Governance: Privacy, Compliance, Security

This focus is often seen combined with a focus on policy enforcement. It’s also seen combined with a focus on Data Quality.

The program almost always results from a senior management mandate. It may be formally sponsored by Business or IT, or it may be an outgrowth of a Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) program.

These programs generally begin with an enterprise scope, but often efforts are limited to specific types of data. They almost always include technologies to locate sensitive data, to protect data, and/or to manage policies or controls.

 

A charter for this type of program may hold Data Governance and Stewardship participants accountable to:

  • Help locate sensitive data across systems
  • Align governance, compliance, security, and technology frameworks and initiatives
  • Help assess risk and define data-related controls to manage risk
  • Help enforce regulatory, contractual, architectural compliance requirements
  • Support Access Management and Security requirements
  • Identify stakeholders, establish decision rights, clarify accountabilities

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Data Governance Program Phases

As you perform the activities needed to gain support and funding, remember that your program may plan to address multiple focus areas. Each new effort should be introduced using the seven steps of the life cycle. Even specific governance-led projects, such as creating a set of data standards, will want to follow the Data Governance Life Cycle steps.

Demonstrating Value

Everything an organization does should tie to one of three universal value drivers. Data Governance efforts MUST tie back to one or more of these drivers. And YOU must communicate how it does.

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 –...

Focus Areas for Data Governance

All Data Governance programs are not alike. Quite the contrary: programs can use the same framework, employ the same processes, and still appear very different. Why is this? It’s because of what the organization is trying to make decisions about or enforce rules for....

Dealing With Politics

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.

Governance and Decision-Making

Remember our (long) definition for Data Governance? “Data Governance is a system of decision rights and accountabilities for information-related processes, executed according to agreed-upon models which describe who can take what actions with what information, and...

Working with Data Stewards

Approaches to Assigning Data Ownership and Stewardship Organizations can take multiple approaches to assigning Data Owners and Data Stewards for enterprise data. In doing so, they need to consider several factors and answer the following questions.Question #1:  Should...

Setting Governance Roles and Responsibilities

Who does what in a Data Governance program? First, a group of individuals (or a hierarchy of groups) representing a cross-section of stakeholder groups makes a set of rules in the form of policies, standards, requirements, guidelines, or data definitions. (Or, they...

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.

Establishing a Data Governance Office

Most organizations that begin a formal Data Governance and Stewardship effort need a support team to facilitate and coordinate activities of councils, stewards, and stakeholders. This support team may be individual contributors who have been doing this work informally...