Data Governance

Data Governance

Data Governance is different from Data Management. Data Governance has both an 'above-the-line' component, and a 'below-the-line' component.

Above The Line Data Governance

Data Governance starts at the top of the business by sanctioning data and making policies and decisions around data. This includes:

• How to form data
• Who can use data

Below The Line Data Governance

Below-the-line data management is the day to day tactics that support the formation of data policies and decisions.

Data Governance Programs

Too often, organizations embarking on formal data governance programs fail to ensure they have the ability to support it. If the data management capability is not in place before rollout of any BI applications, then there will be no-one on the ground to execute data policies, with the end result of governance in a vacuum – no one enabling these decisions.

So before starting any BI initiative, assess where the organisation is with data management and governance – and their willingness of funding additional headcount for DA or data stewards. This absolutely needs to happen.

Premature starting of data governance fails and then BI and Data Governance both get a bad reputation.

Data Governance needs to extend beyond BI into operational data integration through management of master data.

Next: Data Cleansing

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