What is Data Governance?
As businesses and organisations move to become more digital, it is important that the data that is created, used and stored is organised and fully protected. Data governance plays a big role in the processes of protecting and organising data within a business or organisation, ensuring that specific data is stored in specific places and those specific people within a business have access to specific information. So what is data governance and how can it be used to the advantage of a business?
Data governance refers to the systems, technologies and processes that function to ensure that a business or organisation’s data is accurate, protected and can be accessed by only those who need access to it. Without this process, data can become unreliable and can even pose a threat to your business as there are no systems in place protecting who is able to access it.
Who is Responsible for Data Governance?
There are many different key elements that make up data governance and there are also many different people who are responsible for it. The main person to ensure that data governance is secured and in working order is a Chief Data Officer. This is the person who will begin the process of arranging data governance, set up each of the systems in place and hire those who are going to be responsible for making sure that data governance processes are working correctly within an organisation. It will be the Chief Data Officers’ responsibility to oversee all that happens with the data governance program and create the strategy that will incorporate the features involved in this process.
Why is Data Governance Important?
When thinking about why data governance is needed, it is important to consider that processes that look to organise and strategise how data is used and distributed bring meaning to the data itself. Having a good understanding of what types and kinds of data are important when creating a data governance implementation plan can help a business or organisation more effectively use the data that is collected and stored. This makes it an incredibly important process to implement within a business. Using business analytics and data governance together will ensure that the data you collect can be made into meaningful information.
What is Data Governance Used For?
Data is incredibly important when it comes to making informed decisions about the direction a business is going. Whether it is data that is collected about your customers, employees or even finances, having the information readily available and structured in a way that makes it coherent can ensure that certain people within business are able to make informed decisions. For example, if you are considering opening up another store in a different location and expanding your business, you cannot make this decision without having data to prove that it would work.
You would need to find out information about your customers and ensure a new area would have the same kinds of customers and you would also need to ensure that you are financially stable enough to afford it. With a proper data governance system in place, this information will be readily available to those who require access to it and can be easily used to make decisions around a business or organisations needs.
What Are The Goals of Data Governance?
The goals of data governance processes are to ensure that data can be used effectively and that the data that is captured and stored is safe and fully protected. Data is an important part of any business and having information that helps your business make informed and fact-based decisions can make or break how a company functions! Within data governance models comes the need to organise and structure data within specific groups and according to specific metrics.
These different organisation features are carefully thought out to ensure that data is placed in relevant and meaningful places, with people that need this information having easy access to it. One of the main goals of data governance is therefore to arrange the information stored in a meaningful way and use effective metrics to monitor and structure data to make it as effective as possible.
Another important goal of data governance is to ensure that the data that is stored is protected and safe. A big part of data governance is ensuring that only those who need access to certain information will have it, meaning that only specific people within a business or organisation will have access to certain data. This protects the information that a business has stored, whether it is about the financials or even data about the employees within a business. This is an important aspect of data governance as the protection of information is becoming more and more vital.
What are The Benefits of Data Governance?
There are a number of different benefits that come with ensuring data governance is a priority within a business. The following are just a few reasons why this concept is so important.
- The quality of data improves: With data governance comes an improvement in the quality of the data that you have. When you have a better understanding of what kinds of data are needed for a specific business model, you can better record and store the data that you have, keeping what is relevant and discarding what is not. Data governance models, therefore, ensure that the overall quality of data and information improves a great deal!
- Better organisation of data: Data governance allows for data to be better organised and stored within specific groups. With data governance comes the need to better understand the different metrics needed to organise data, with a specific grouping of information relevant to different teams and needing to be organised in specific ways. Being able to organise your data and structure it in such a way that relevant information is grouped together can help you better understand the information you have!
- Protection of data: When looking at the business benefits of data governance, having systems that are set up to secure the data that is gathered and processed is one of the main benefits of data governance and data security should not be overlooked! This is extremely important and can help ensure a company remains reputable, both in terms of their clients and with their employees.
What are The Challenges of Data Governance?
The impact of poor data governance can have extremely negative consequences and ensuring that you have a team that is able to come up with a good data governance strategy and follow through on this plan is extremely important. One of the biggest challenges that businesses are faced with when it comes to data governance is that this framework often requires a lot of manpower, and very often, businesses simply do not have the resources to manage the data that needs to be created. It is important that the resources needed to use data governance are thought about regularly, and when more resources are needed as a brand grows and more data is needing to be funnelled through a business, the data governance team grows along with it!
How to Develop a Data Governance Framework?
A framework is designed to outline exactly what needs to be done to create the perfect system to correctly handle and create specific information and data. A data governance strategy and framework does just that, and it is important that this framework be designed and implemented as it can provide important insight into how this data should be handled and collected.
- Set a goal: having an idea of the most important aspects of your data governance framework will ensure that you know which steps and processes need to be prioritised. In order to know which of the data is most valuable to your team or business, it is important that you have an end goal in mind! Part of setting a goal is also deciding on the metrics that will be used to measure your data, and part of understanding the best metrics to use will help you better understand the data itself.
- Have a good team: Once you have decided on the goals of your data governance strategy and have set what you plan to use the data captured and stored for, you will need to hire a team of experts to ensure that the strategy you have created is carried out. Having a knowledgeable team behind you will ensure that the systems that you have in place will be effective.
- Develop a data governance model: A large part of creating a data governance plan is coming up with the hierarchy that will determine who has access to what data. Having a hierarchy that clearly outlines who has access to what kinds of data will ensure that it remains secure and protected. The rules for data collection should also be highlighted in this model, clearly outlining how data should be collected and the metrics used to handle the information that is gathered.
- Distribution process: Clearly outlining and identifying the distribution processes involved with the sharing of certain types of data is important. As mentioned previously, data can often be sensitive and sharing it with only those who require access to it is an important part of keeping this information safe and secure.
Data Governance Best Practices
- Have a dedicated team: When it comes to data governance best practices, the team that you put together to implement your data governance strategy will make or break whether your plan is effective. Having a strong and knowledgeable team behind you will mean that the strategy that is devised to secure and create the data processes will be managed well and that the systems that are put in place are effective.
- Be transparent: When it comes to the data governance program that you have put in place, it is always important that a company is transparent with their clients, stakeholders and even their employees when it comes to the data that you are using. Ensuring that they know the systems that are in place to keep their information safe is an important part of being a reputable company, which is extremely important no matter what industry you are in.
- Refine your framework: As things within your business change and develop, it is important that your framework be updated according to these changes. As your company or organisation grows and becomes larger, you may find that you have more at stake or more to protect, and ensuring that your data governance strategy takes this into account is important. Through monitoring changes and updating them according to new developments, you can be sure that your business and your data governance plan will run smoothly!
What are The Tools of Data Governance?
There are different data governance tools that can help a business better understand this concept and also implement it within an organisation. Using these tools to the best of your ability and understanding how they function can help to improve your data governance plan and secure the information you need so that it can be reached easily. IBM Cloud Pak for Data is one of the best-known data governance tools on the market today.
IBM Cloud Pak for Data
IBM Cloud Pak for Data helps a business to create, manage, distribute and analyse data across one easy to use platform. Data governance can be confusing and if you do not have a system in place that outlines each of your goals and structures the data in specific ways, you may find holes in your strategy and the implementation of your plan. When it comes to data governance technology, IBM Cloud Pak for Data is an end-to-end solution to simplify data governance, maintain privacy and it can easily structure complex data in ways that are both easy to interpret and easy to manage, ensuring that your network of information remains safe and can be found when needed.
