Data Governance: The Definitive Guide

Chapter 1. What Is Data Governance?

Data governance is, first and foremost, a data management function to ensure the quality, integrity, security, and usability of the data collected by an organization. Data governance needs to be in place from the time a factoid of data is collected or generated until the point in time at which that data is destroyed or archived. Along the way in this full life cycle of the data, data governance focuses on making the data available to all stakeholders in a form that they can readily access. In addition, it must be one they can use in a manner that generates the desired business outcomes (insights, analysis) and conforms to regulatory standards, if relevant. These regulatory standards are often an intersection of industry (e.g., healthcare), government (e.g., privacy), and company (e.g., nonpartisan) rules and codes of behavior. Moreover, data governance needs to ensure that the stakeholders get a high-quality integrated view of all the data within the enterprise. There are many facets to high-quality data—the data needs to be correct, up to date, and consistent. Finally, data governance needs to be in place to ensure that the data is secure, by which we mean that:

• It is accessed only by permitted users in permitted ways

• It is auditable, meaning all accesses, including changes, are logged

• It is compliant with regulations

The purpose of data governance is to enhance trust in the data. Trustworthy data is necessary to enable users to employ enterprise ...