Governance and Decision-Making

Processes and Alignments

Remember our (long) definition for Data Governance?

“Data Governance is a system of decision rights and accountabilities for information-related processes, executed according to agreed-upon models which describe who can take what actions with what information, and when, under what circumstances, using what methods.”

Focus on Architecture

Yes, Data Governance is about enforcing rules. But just as important, usually, is ensuring that the right stakeholders are involved in making the rules.

Sometimes – especially for compliance-related rules – it’s easy to know who should decide on a rule. But other times it’s hard. And most organizations have lots of examples from their own histories of decisions that were made without input from key stakeholders. They can tell stories of the problems created when the right groups were not consulted.

So a best practice is that before any rule is created or any data-related decision is made, a prior decision must be addressed: who gets to make the decision, and when, and using what process?

This practice is called establishing “Decision Rights” for the decision.

It is the responsibility of Data Governance program facilitators to know (or discover) who should be involved in making different types of governance decisions. It is also generally a responsibility of the program to facilitate (and to sometimes document and store) the collection of decision rights that are the “metadata” of data-related decisions.

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Demonstrating Value

Everything an organization does should tie to one of three universal value drivers. Data Governance efforts MUST tie back to one or more of these drivers. And YOU must communicate how it does.

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Focus Areas for Data Governance

All Data Governance programs are not alike. Quite the contrary: programs can use the same framework, employ the same processes, and still appear very different. Why is this? It’s because of what the organization is trying to make decisions about or enforce rules for....
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Establishing a Data Governance Office

Most organizations that begin a formal Data Governance and Stewardship effort need a support team to facilitate and coordinate activities of councils, stewards, and stakeholders. This support team may be individual contributors who have been doing this work informally...
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Defining Organizational Structures

There is no single “right” way to organize Data Governance and Stewardship. Some organizations have distinct Data Governance programs. Others embed Data Governance activities into Data Quality or Master Data Management programs.

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Choosing Governance Models

It’s important to define the organizational structure of your Data Governance program. But before you can do that you have to define your governance model at a higher level. You need to consider what types of decisions your governance bodies will be called upon to...
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Funding Models: Funding Data Governance

The DGI Data Governance Framework addresses funding two ways: Obtaining funding and support is a phase in the Data Governance Life Cycle Funding is part of one of the components of the framework. What type of funding is needed? Data Governance programs need to...
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Starting a Data Governance Program

A successful Data Governance program does not begin with the design of the program! Before you start deciding who goes on what committee, you should be clear about your program’s value statement. You should have developed a roadmap to share with stakeholders. Those...
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Data Governance Program Phases

As you perform the activities needed to gain support and funding, remember that your program may plan to address multiple focus areas. Each new effort should be introduced using the seven steps of the life cycle. Even specific governance-led projects, such as creating a set of data standards, will want to follow the Data Governance Life Cycle steps.

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Focus Areas for Data Governance: Architecture, Integration

This type of program typically comes into existence in conjunction with a major system acquisition, development effort, or update that requires new levels of cross-functional decision-making and accountabilities.What other types of groups and initiatives might want...
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Focus Areas for Data Governance: Privacy, Compliance, Security

This type of program typically comes into existence because of concerns about Data Information Security controls, or compliance. Compliance, in this context, may refer to regulatory compliance, contractual compliance, or compliance with internal requirements.This...
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