Creating a data governance strategy for your organisation is an imperative in today’s data-driven world. Implementing the strategy is the next step after it has been developed. This is where many businesses get stalled. They lack the technical infrastructure to implement data governance. Internal data governance is one thing, and maybe you have found success managing this without a platform. But in order to get true value out of datasets and gain new insights, accessing external data is where success lies.

If external data sharing is already part of your data governance strategy, well done! That makes things a little bit easier. If not, then you will want to begin considering how to manage external data projects as part of your strategy. A data governance platform will enforce data governance workflows, manage user permissions and access, and help the Chief Data Officer maintain oversight on all data projects.

Best data governance platforms

Data governance platforms need to have some key features for them to help you implement your strategy for external data sharing:

• Legal terms or licenses between parties managed on the platform
• User access controls and permissions
• Secure storage and analytics tools
• Audit trails of interactions
• Reporting tools

Enterprise data governance platforms

Managing enterprise data governance requires a different set of features. Enterprise businesses usually have multiple departments, subsidiary brands or separation between legal entities. For data sharing to be managed between these groups under the enterprise brand, data governance often must act as if they are separate companies.

This means that organisations may need to have multiple departments added to projects, but with limited access. The license terms may be more streamlined than with an external company. Reporting across departments may need to be accessible for the C Suite.

Another feature of enterprise data governance platforms is the ability to uncover datasets within the organisation in a private catalog. This helps different teams know what data is available to analysis and then provides the governance to gain access and analyse the data.

Data governance resources

A data governance platform is one resource to help manage and implement data governance within your organisation. There are other resources which can help your team succeed, including:

• The Five Safes Framework
• Data cataloging tools
• Analytics tools including machine learning and AI
• Data security and protection tools

Choosing a data governance platform

When it comes to choosing a data governance platform, you need to decide how your organisation plans on using data and the current technical set up for managing data analysis.

Consider these questions:

• Will it only be used for internal projects?
• What analytics tools does your team use currently that would need to be integrated?
• How is your data currently stored? Private cloud or on prem?
• What features are required to adhere to the data governance strategy?

These questions will help determine the best solution for your organisation.

The most comprehensive data governance platform is from Data Republic to run data sharing projects with external partners. Data Republic solves the complexity of multi-party data sharing with the legal framework and technical platform for external data sharing.

Data Republic offers end-to-end data governance from legal terms, to user access and dataset licenses. Your team can customise projects with flexible storage solutions and the ability to deploy a wide range of analytics tools for data analysis.

A data governance platform is the mechanism for putting your strategy into action. In today’s world, data movement is key to new insights and innovation. Without a data governance platform to manage that data movement securely and in a compliant way, your team will hit a roadblock.