Best practices for managing data assets

Data governance defines roles, responsibilities, and processes to ensure accountability and ownership of data assets across the enterprise.

 

Definition of data governance

Data governance is a system for defining who within an organization has authority and control over data assets and how those data assets can be used. It encompasses the people, processes, and technologies needed to manage and protect data assets.

The Data Governance Institute defines it as “a system of decision rights and responsibilities for information-related processes, executed according to agreed models that describe who can take what actions with what information, and when, under what circumstances, using what methods.”

The Data Management Association (DAMA) International defines it as the “planning, monitoring and control over data management and the use of data and data-related sources.”

 

Data Governance Framework

Data governance can best be thought of as a function that supports an organization’s overall data management strategy. Such a framework provides your organization with a holistic approach to collecting, managing, protecting, and storing data. To help understand what a framework should cover, DAMA envisions data management as a wheel, with the governance of

Data as the hub from which the following 10 data management knowledge areas radiate:

• Data architecture: The overall structure of data and data-related resources as an integral part of enterprise architecture.
• Data modeling and design: analysis, design, construction, testing and maintenance
• Data storage and operations: Implementing and managing structured physical data asset storage
• Data security: ensuring privacy, confidentiality and proper access
• Data integration and interoperability: acquisition, extraction, transformation, movement, delivery, replication, federation, virtualization and operational support
• Documents and content: store, protect, index and enable access to data found in unstructured sources and make this data available for integration and interoperability with structured data
• Master and reference data: Shared data management to reduce redundancy and ensure better data quality by standardizing definition and use of data values.
• Data warehousing and business intelligence (BI): managing analytical data processing and enabling access to decision support data for reporting and analysis.
• Metadata: collection, categorization, maintenance, integration, control, management and delivery of metadata
• Data quality: define, monitor, maintain data integrity and improve data quality

When establishing a strategy, each of the above facets of data collection, management, archiving, and use should be considered.

The Business Application Research Center (BARC) warns that data governance is a highly complex and ongoing program, not a “big bang initiative,” and risks participants losing trust and interest over time. To counter that, BARC recommends starting with a manageable or application-specific prototype project and then expanding across the enterprise based on lessons learned.

BARC recommends the following steps for implementation:

• Define objectives and understand the benefits
• Analyze current state and delta analysis
• Derive a roadmap
• Convince stakeholders and budget the project
• Develop and plan the data governance program
• Implement the data governance program
• Monitor and control

 

Data governance vs. data management

Data governance is only one part of the overall discipline of data management, although it is important. While data governance is about the roles, responsibilities, and processes for ensuring accountability and ownership of data assets, DAMA defines data management as “an umbrella term describing the processes used to plan, specify, enable, create, acquire, maintain, use, archive, retrieve, control, and purge data.”

While data management has become a common term for the discipline, it is sometimes referred to as data resource management or enterprise information management (EIM). Gartner describes EIM as “an integrative discipline for structuring, describing and governing information assets across organizational and technical boundaries to improve efficiency, promote transparency and enable business insight.”

Most companies already have some form of governance in place for individual applications, business units, or functions, even if the processes and

Responsibilities are informal. As a practice, it is about establishing systematic and formal control over these processes and responsibilities. Doing so can help businesses remain responsive, especially as they grow to a size where it’s no longer efficient for people to perform cross-functional tasks. Several of the overall benefits of data management can only be realized after the company has established systematic data governance. Some of these benefits include:

• Better and more complete decision support derived from consistent and uniform data across the organization
• Clear rules for changing processes and data that help business and IT become more agile and scalable
• Cost reduction in other areas of data management through the provision of central control mechanisms
• Increased efficiency through the ability to reuse processes and data
• Increased confidence in data quality and documentation of data processes
• Improved data compliance

 

Data governance goals

The goal is to establish the methods, set of responsibilities, and processes for standardizing, integrating, protecting, and storing corporate data. According to BARC, the key objectives of an organization should be:

• Minimize risks
• Establish internal rules for data usage
• Implement compliance requirements
• Improve internal and external communication
• Increase the value of data
• Facilitate the administration of the above
• Reduce costs
• Help ensure business continuity through risk management and optimization

BARC notes that such programs always span the strategic, tactical and operational levels in companies, and should be treated as continuous, iterative processes.

 

Data Governance Principles

According to the Data Governance Institute, eight principles are at the core of all successful data governance and management programs:

1. All participants must have integrity in their relationships with each other. They must be truthful and communicative when discussing the drivers, constraints, options, and impacts of data-related decisions.
2. Data governance and management processes require transparency. It should be clear to all participants and auditors how and when data-related decisions and controls were introduced into processes.
3. Decisions, processes and controls related to data subject to data governance should be auditable. They should be accompanied by documentation to support operational and compliance-based audit requirements.
4. They should define who is responsible for data-related multifunctional decisions, processes, and controls.
5. You must define who is responsible for administration activities that are the responsibilities of individual contributors and groups of data administrators.
6. Programs should define responsibilities in a way that introduces checks and balances between business and technology teams, and between those who create/collect information, those who manage it, those who use it, and those who introduce compliance standards and requirements.
7. The program should introduce and support the standardization of business data.
8. Programmes should support proactive and reactive change management activities for baseline data values and the structure/use of master data and metadata.

 

Data governance best practices

Data governance strategies must adapt to best fit an organization’s processes, needs, and goals. Still, there are six basic best practices worth following:

1. Identify critical data elements and treat data as a strategic resource.
2. Establish policies and procedures for the entire data lifecycle.
3. Involve business users in the governance process.
4. Don’t neglect master data management.
5. Understand the value of information.
6. Don’t restrict data usage too much.

For more information on how to get data governance right, see “6 Best Practices for Good Data Governance.”

 

Challenges in data governance

Good data governance is not an easy task. It requires teamwork, investment and resources, as well as planning and monitoring. Some of the main challenges of a data governance program include:

• Lack of data leadership: Like other business functions, data governance requires strong executive leadership. The leader must give direction to the governance team, develop policies for everyone in the organization to follow, and communicate with other leaders in the company.
• Lack of resources: Data governance initiatives can struggle due to lack of investment in budget or personnel. Data governance should be owned and paid for by someone, but it rarely generates revenue on its own. However, data governance and data management in general are essential to leveraging data to generate revenue.
• Siloed data: Data has a way of becoming siloed and segmented over time, especially as lines of business or other functions develop new data sources, apply new technologies, and the like. Your data governance program needs to continually break down new silos.

To learn more about these pitfalls and others, see “7 Data Governance Mistakes to Avoid.”

 

Data Governance Software and Vendors

Data governance is an ongoing program rather than a technology solution, but there are tools with data governance features that can help support your program. The tool that suits your business will depend on your needs, data volume, and budget. According to PeerSpot, some of the most popular solutions include:

Data Governance Solution

Colllibra Governance: Collibra is an enterprise-wide solution that automates many governance and administration tasks. It includes a policy manager, a data help desk, a data dictionary, and a business glossary.

SAS  Data Management: Built on the SAS platform, SAS Data Management provides a role-based GUI for managing processes and includes an integrated enterprise glossary, SAS and third-party metadata management, and lineage visualization.

Erwin Data Intelligence (DI) for Data Governance: Erwin DI  combines data catalog and data literacy capabilities to provide insight and access to available data assets. It provides guidance on the use of those data assets and ensures that data policies and best practices are followed.

Informatica Axon: Informatica Axon is a collection center and data marketplace for support programs. Key features include a collaborative business glossary, the ability to visualize data lineage, and generate data quality measurements based on business definitions.

SAP Data Hub: SAP Data Hub is a data orchestration solution aimed at helping you discover, refine, enrich, and govern all types, varieties, and volumes of data across your data environment. It helps organizations establish security settings and identity control policies for users, groups, and roles, and streamline best practices and processes for security logging and policy management.

Alathion: A business data catalog that automatically indexes data by source. One of its key capabilities, TrustCheck, provides real-time “guardrails” to workflows. Designed specifically to support self-service analytics, TrustCheck attaches guidelines and rules to data assets.

Varonis Data Governance Suite: Varonis’ solution automates data protection and management tasks by leveraging a scalable metadata framework that allows organizations to manage data access, view audit trails of every file and email event, identify data ownership across different business units, and find and classify sensitive data and documents.

IBM Data Governance: IBM Data Governance leverages machine learning to collect and select data assets. The integrated data catalog helps companies find, select, analyze, prepare, and share data.

Data Governance Certifications

Data governance is one system, but there are some certifications that can help your organization gain an edge, including the following:

• DAMA Certified Data Management Professional (CDMP)
• Data Governance and Management Professional (DGSP)
• edX Enterprise Data Management
• SAP Certified Application Associate – SAP Master Data Governance

For related certifications, see “10 Master Data Management Certifications That Will Pay Off.”

 

Data governance roles

Every company makes up its data governance differently, but there are some commonalities.

 

Steering Committee: Governance programs are enterprise-wide, usually beginning with a steering committee composed of senior managers, often C-level individuals or vice presidents responsible for lines of business. Morgan Templar, author of Get Governed: Building World Class Data Governance Programs, says steering committee members’ responsibilities include setting the overall governance strategy with specific outcomes, championing the work of data stewards, and holding the governance organization accountable for timelines and results.

 

Data owner: Templar says data owners are individuals responsible for ensuring that information within a specific data domain is governed across systems and lines of business. They are generally members of the steering committee, although they may not be voting members. Data subjects are responsible for:

• Approval of data glossaries and other data definitions
• Ensure accuracy of information across the enterprise
• Direct data quality activities
• Review and approve master data management approaches, outcomes and activities
• Work with other data owners to resolve data issues
• Second-level review for issues identified by data stewards
• Provide the steering committee with information on software solutions, policies or regulatory requirements for their data domain

 

Data Administrator: Data stewards are responsible for the day-to-day management of data. They are subject matter experts (SMEs) who understand and communicate the meaning and use of information, Templar says, and work with other data stewards across the organization as the governing body of the organization.

Most data decisions. Data stewards are responsible for:

• Be SMEs for your data domain
• Identify data issues and work with other data stewards to resolve them
• Act as a member of the board of data stewards
• Proposal, discussion and voting of data policies and committee activities
• Inform the data owner and other stakeholders within a data domain
• Work cross-functionally across lines of business to ensure your domain data is managed and understood