Setting Governance Roles and Responsibilities

Organizations and Accountabilities

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 gather and align rules. Or address gaps and overlaps in rule sets. Or interpret rules. Or establish guidelines for how to layer rules on top of each other.)

Setting Governance Roles and Responsibilities

This group of rule-makers may go by several names: a Data Governance Board, a Data Stewardship Council, etc. They may be self-organizing, or they may be called together by another body such as a Data Governance Office (DGO) that coordinates and facilitates efforts.

Next, Data Governance always includes a mechanism for resolving data-related issues. Issues are generally addressed at several levels, with a clear escalation path. A particular issue, then, may be resolved by an individual Data Steward, a Stewardship working group, the entire Data Stewardship Council, or the highest-level Data Governance Board.

Finally, the best Data Governance programs proactively strive to stop data-related problems before they begin by reducing ambiguity, establishing clear accountabilities, and disseminating data-related information to all Data Stakeholders. Such programs usually include a Data Governance Office (DGO) or its equivalent to provide alignment between stakeholders and to provide ongoing support to programs, projects, and groups that work with data.

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Choosing Governance Models

It’s important to define the organizational structure of your Data Governance program. But before you can do that you have to define your governance model at a higher level. You need to consider what types of decisions your governance bodies will be called upon to...
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Governance and Issue Resolution

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...
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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...
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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...
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Focus Areas for Data Governance: Architecture, Integration

This type of program typically comes into existence in conjunction with a major system acquisition, development effort, or update that requires new levels of cross-functional decision-making and accountabilities.What other types of groups and initiatives might want...
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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.

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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.

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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.

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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...
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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...
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