Data governance requires a broad process with participation at every level. In addition, it also requires a substantial investment in talent and technology.
Implementing a robust data governance framework offers significant business benefits despite the challenges. This guide will cover the critical components of a comprehensive governance strategy, including the data catalog, data lineage, and data sharing.
Data Catalog
A well-planned data governance framework covers the full spectrum of responsibilities. It ensures that data is easily accessible and understandable for all users while ensuring that policies are followed, risks minimized, and the integrity of all data maintained.
This data governance process is vital for a business because it helps eliminate data errors and ensures that all systems use the correct data, which enables organizations to optimize decision-making processes based on accurate information. It also helps reduce the risk of data breaches and protects sensitive information.
A robust data catalog is the foundation of a modern data architecture, which supports rapid and reliable discovery and understanding of all available business data. It can provide a single, searchable inventory of all available data assets, including metadata and unstructured data from collaboration tools and SaaS applications. It can also contain automated mechanisms for enforcing data governance policies and ensuring all data is secure, compliant, and private.
Moreover, a data catalog can help manage the complexity of a multi-cloud environment by providing native and automated data lineage. This reveals who created a data asset, when, and how it was used, giving context for all available information. It can also reveal how different data sources are correlated and transformed, enabling users to find the most relevant information quickly and accurately.
Data Sharing
A data governance framework supports the documentation of systems, documenting the flow of data across an organization, and helps business stakeholders understand how their processes, capabilities, and projects are impacted. It enables organizations to establish a shared vocabulary through a business glossary and also aids in the identification of specific, sensitive data sets that require more rigorous governance.
Effective governance helps organizations avoid costly compliance violations, protects their reputations, and strengthens stakeholder trust. Its implementation results in better data quality and makes it easier to meet regulatory requirements such as GDPR and CCPA.
More data governance is needed to create consistent and accurate information in multiple systems across an organization, with the potential for disastrous consequences. For example, if departments list customer names differently, that inconsistency will impact the accuracy of business intelligence and enterprise reporting applications. It will also complicate data integration efforts and increase the likelihood of errors not caught on time and fixed, reducing confidence in the organization’s data assets.
A robust data governance framework is vital to a successful data management program. It includes a comprehensive set of best practices that help organizations ensure the availability, integrity, and security of their data while protecting the privacy of digital users and adhering to industry regulations.
Data Lineage
Data lineage maps the journey data takes as it moves among an organization’s systems. It helps IT, data governance teams, and business users visually understand the data assets. It can also aid compliance efforts by providing a way to track and demonstrate regulatory compliance in sensitive areas.
Different tiers of data lineage are available, ranging from simple visual representations of how data moves within an organization to attribute-level lineage that provides insights into data transformations and ways to improve data platforms. Attribute-level lineage is more comprehensive but can have higher implementation and monitoring costs. As a result, many organizations only implement attribute-level lineage for data that is of critical value, has regulatory concerns, or could have an organizational impact.
With data lineage, BI and analytics teams can easily trace where data comes from, what it is transformed into, and where it goes so they can make more meaningful analyses and use data to drive better business decisions. In addition, it allows IT to identify and resolve issues faster by delivering current visibility into the complex web of data formed among an organization’s information systems.
For example, if an audit indicates that a process doesn’t follow regulations, data lineage can provide the required proof to satisfy regulators and avoid costly fines. In addition, it can highlight potential impacts of upcoming IT projects, such as data migrations or changes to ETL processes.
Data Security
Data governance initiatives typically include a committee or council that approves policies and standards on data access and usage and procedures for enforcing them. This team, usually composed of business executives and other data owners, resolves disputes — like disagreements between departments about data definitions or formats.
As the data governance process evolves, keeping pace with the organization’s needs and the demands of its digital users is essential. For instance, high-profile data breaches and new privacy laws (such as GDPR or CCPA) often require businesses to protect sensitive personal information as a central part of their data governance frameworks.
This includes ensuring that data is classified correctly and protected appropriately. This can be accomplished through a classification system that organizes and categorizes data based on sensitivity, value, and criticality. This allows organizations to reduce risks and better comply with data privacy mandates.
Robust data governance is essential for the integrity and security of a business’s most valuable asset, its data. It’s a critical foundation for building intelligence and automation that provides a trusted source of truth for decision-making and helps teams work together more efficiently, effectively, and accurately.