Guidance by GwenData Governance Guidance by Gwen Thomas,
President and founder of the
Data Governance Institute.
When DGI founder Gwen Thomas Googled the term 'Data Governance' in 2003, there were just 67 search results! She was surprised to find so little on the web; after all, she'd been helping teams govern content, metadata, documents, and structured data since 1986.
So she decided to work in Data Governance full time. She founded the Data Governance Institute in 2003 and began DataGovernance.com, which has become the web's largest source of free information about Data Governance and Stewardship and related topics.
During Gwen's career as a consultant, manager, writer, and industry analyst, she has developed a large body of work. She's decided to give back to the community by sharing some of her processes, templates, and tools. Check back frequently; she'll be adding more to the site every month.
Gwen's bio Her blog Events she has/will present at A few publications...
Getting Started
How do you put together a sustainable Data Governance and Stewardship program? Here Gwen provides definitions, a discussion of Governance versus Stewardship, and typical program goals and principles. She provides guidance for starting a program and describes the different implementation phases of a program.
Organizations and Accountabilities
How to build your governance effort. Here Gwen describes how to assign data ownership, responsibility, roles and responsibilities. She also discusses working with data stewards, choosing and working with governance models, defining your organizational structures and establishing a Data Governance Office.
Processes and Alignments
These topics address what you do when you're doing Data Governance. We've started with high-level overviews of a few basic topics: Roles & Responsibilities, Alignment, Communications, Decision-Making, and Issue Resolution. Gwen's got lots of detailed processes and tools in these areas; she'll be making them web-ready and posting them over the course of the summer and beyond.
Focus Areas
Data Governance programs exist to meet specific needs, such as supporting Compliance, Business Transformation, and/or Business/Data Integration. As a result, there can be many different 'flavors' of Data Governance programs that focus on different initiatives. Here Gwen discusses topics that describe six common focus areas, the types of data they typically address, and what might be included in a charter for this type of program.
See also:
The DGI Data Governance Framework.
This is an overview of the DGI Data Governance Framework. This framework has been used as a foundation for dozens of governance efforts, in organizations ranging from F500 enterprises to regional companies. There's also Framework Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) and an in-depth look at
DGI Data Governance Framework components Regardless of the focus of your program, it will include each of the 10 universal program components to some extent, although the emphasis of each component will vary according to your program's objectives. - The DGI Data Governance Framework
Basic Data Governance Questions Answered.
With these topics, the Data Governance Institute provides the essential WHO-WHAT-WHEN-WHERE-WHY-HOW information about Data Governance. including definitions, short answers to basic questions, and links to more detailed information located throughout this website. These questions include: - Who is involved with Data Governance
- What Data Governance does
- When to have formal Data Governance
- Where to place Data Governance in an organization
- Why formal Data Governance Frameworks help
- How to "do" Data Governance
- How much Data Governance is needed
- The most overlooked aspect of Data Governance
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