What Is Data Governance? Understanding the Business Impact

Chapter 1. What Is Data Governance?

Data isn’t just a commodity; it’s a capital asset. It drives businesses, creates value, and inspires new ventures. If your enterprise has conscientiously collected, ingested, stored, maintained, and used data, now is the time to attach value to it and make it work for you. If you govern it properly and instill confidence in its quality, your data can give your business a competitive advantage. This report will walk you through that process.

Like money, data must be treated with a serious dose of respect, and a project using data should generate value with a reasonable maintenance cost over time. Everyone needs to understand why data is so important to the business and how serious the consequences of a data breach can be. Instilling that understanding and respect requires a cultural shift that affects the entire enterprise. That’s the purpose of data governance, the discipline of creating and enforcing policies and standards to ensure that data is always treated with care and respect for safety and the law.

This report will help you understand what data governance is and why it’s crucial to your business.

This chapter looks at the basic ideas involved in data governance: what it is, who does it, and how it fits into an organization. You’ll learn why data must be treated and valued as an asset and what sets it apart from other kinds of assets. We’ll discuss the fundamental principles that underlie data governance. You’ll also come to understand ...