Data Governance
Data Governance and data sharing go hand in hand, but the former is often found confusing. So here’s our comprehensive guide on everything you need to know to stay on top of data governance in your organisation. With 2.5 quintillion bytes of data created each day, every business needs to be data orientated, and governance is a crucial aspect.
What is data governance?
Data governance is the process of governing the collection, storage and use of data assets within an organization. A governance strategy should aim to manage these three elements in alignment in order to ensure data quality, compliance and security in data practices.
Each company’s data governance strategy will centre around the risks and regulations that are particular to that industry. For example, in financial services, there are many data regulations such as GDPR that require strict governance of data.
Data governance vs data management
At this point, you might be wondering how data governance relates to data management and how the two are different. Data management refers to the overall strategy used to describe practices relating to development, execution and supervision of data assets. Within this, data governance is a sub-branch that works to protect and regulate data through the policies, processes and platforms.
Data governance challenges
There are many challenges associated with data governance, which require company-wide planning and strategy to overcome. Key challenges include developing roles and accountability, data cleansing, unlocking datasets, and ‘internal blindness’.
The good news is, that overcoming these challenges will enable your company to truly take hold of your data and ensure it is being utilised as an asset, not a risk.
Find out what your companies data governance challenges might be here.
What is a data governance framework?
A data governance framework is a strategic model that structures how a company approaches the challenge of governing their data assets. This enables a common framework across the technical and business-operations sides of the company in order to ensure that there is a previously developed approach in place that can be applied to challenges that may arise.
Elements of consideration in the framework include data policy development, data sharing practices, data quality, regulatory compliance measures.
Data governance platform
After you have created a data governance strategy designed to overcome these challenges, the next step is to implement a technology platform, which is where many businesses get stalled. Data governance platforms can be used to structure workflows, manage user permissions and involve multiple teams in data projects.
The data platform that your company chooses will depend on how you are using your data, and what kind of output you require.
Data Governance tools
Once your data governance strategy has been developed, investing in the right data governance tool for your organisation is the next step. The right tool depends on the use case and the business goals that your company has identified. For some, compliance and regulation is the main focus of governance, and for others, it is all about analytics. There are a number of tools out there with different functionality, so approaching it with a mindset attuned to the challenges facing your organisation will lead to you find the right tool that can implement your data governance strategy effectively.
Read more about how to find the right tool here.