When an organisation realizes the value of its data through its insights into the business and the information it brings to activities and people, the organisation assumes data as one of its assets. Nowadays, data is considered the most significant asset of an organisation and when decisions are made based on what this asset can provide, then the organisation turns ‘Data Driven’.
Like any other asset, data needs to be managed so it delivers trustable information to businesses. Data management is then adopted to ensure that data is collected, kept, and used in the most secure, efficient, and cost-effective way. But what defines secure, efficient and cost-effective? And by whom? And through with process, tool or technology? Data Governance helps answer those questions.
Data Governance is everything an organisation needs to define and do to have proper data quality throughout the data lifecycle and proper data usage across the organisation. It establishes policies, procedures, and technologies that allow the right user to find, prepare, use and share the right datasets. Therefore, Data Governance connects and coordinates the triad of people, technology, and data processes.
Does my organisation need data governance?
Even though the answer should be yes to all organisations, it is important to look at specific characteristics to understand the importance and urgency of Data Governance in their contexts. For that, we can ask questions like:
Who uses, prepares, and shares data? Are they the right people to do it?
Is there any policy or legal regulation applied to data being used/manipulated?
Whoever uses the data knows how to collect, store and share data in a way that does not jeopardise its integrity and quality?
Whoever consumes the data can trust the quality of its analysis and decisions based on the information it provides?
How many departments use the same data? Do they all ensure data integrity and quality? Do they follow the same procedure to collect, enrich, store, and share data? Do they know other departments use the same data?
Whoever consumes the data knows how and where to get it from?
Whoever consumes the data knows to whom to report in case of any data issue?
Many other questions can arise when looking into an organisation’s sets of data and reported or identified data issues. These questions will help the organisation decide to implement a Data Governance program in order to mitigate those data issues and improve data quality and process efficiency.
How to successfully govern data?
Data Governance comes to an organisation due to a drive for change, such as market demand, change in the regulatory laws, fusions or acquires, cost reduction, changes in the social or geopolitical context, and business growth, among many other reasons. So, it is important to look at the organisation’s data governance program as a project with its plan, budget and roadmap, requirements and risk, tasks and workflows, and status and closure reports. A project exists to produce a unique service or product that brings value to the organisation, and so does Data Governance that will provide the organisation with the right guidelines to achieve and maintain data quality, data integrity and security, law and regulation compliance, and data access and data democratisation.
Data is not managed nor governed by itself or by technology alone. Data is for businesses and people that get, use and consume data through processes. Having this Data Governance triad in mind, make sure that the plan is prepared for:
Assessing in depth the maturity of the organisation in data literacy, data quality and security;
Identifying priorities and precedencies of the program implementation and breaking down the technical or organisational complexity;
Defining a change management plan to support the Data Governance program implementation;
Incorporating data awareness and culture;
Having the board members and administrators support the program next to the impacted elements;
Prepare and empower the impacted elements before and during the program implementation;
Communicating before and during the program implementation;
Identifying potential change-resistant points and start working on and with them before and during the program implementation;
Identifying and preparing to overcome the cultural barriers;
Defining realistic expectations according to the organisation’s context;
Defining SMART objectives and KPIs.
Conclusion
Data Governance is not a trend that will go out of fashion soon. It is a necessary set of policies, patterns and processes that will help a ‘Data Driven’ organisation to stay up to speed with security, quality and data demands across all company’s activities. It is important to know very well the actual maturity of the organisation before stepping into the program – you cannot play if you don’t know the rules. Also, it is worth remembering that, as data is an organisation’s asset so do people, and people get, use, manipulate and consume data to get the information and business insights to move forward and grow.
So, when planning a Data Governance program do it with and for people and checkmate in the data game.
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by Rita Pinto
@ Passio Consulting
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