What Is Data Governance?

The explosion of data and the velocity of its delivery have compelled organizations to incorporate an integrated set of processes, practices, and policies to guide their data use.

Data governance ensures there’s a well-defined, company-wide framework that can foster proper data stewardship.

What Is Data Governance?

Data Governance refers to managing the availability, usability, integrity, and security of data used in an enterprise.

This involves establishing policies, procedures, and responsibility frameworks to ensure the organization's data is reliable, consistent, and controlled. It governs data collection, storage, processing, and disposal and regulates who can access what data types.

Data governance aims to ensure high-quality data, compliance with laws and regulations, and secure protection of sensitive data. It also seeks to improve an organization's efficiency and effectiveness by utilizing data strategically for decision-making processes.

Why Do Businesses Need Data Governance?

Businesses need data governance for several key reasons:

Ensuring Data Quality: Data governance helps maintain data quality and reliability. This is accomplished through standard procedures and rules for data collection, storage, management, and usage, preventing inconsistencies and anomalies that can dilute the data's value.
Regulatory Compliance: Businesses operate under various local, national, and international regulations, many of which relate to data protection and handling. Data governance policies can ensure compliance with these regulations, helping to avoid penalties and legal issues.
Risk Management: Good data governance can help identify potential risks and threats, enabling proactive management and containment.
Security and Privacy: Proper data governance includes protective measures to ensure data security and privacy of sensitive data, thus minimizing risks such as data breaches and unauthorized access.
Efficiency and Decision-Making: Data governance can lead to operational efficiency by reducing errors and redundancies in data management. Furthermore, high-quality, well-managed data can facilitate better business decisions and strategic planning.
Enhancing Customer Trust: Well-governed data can enhance customer trust as consumers are increasingly conscious about how their data is collected, used, and protected.
Profitability: High-quality data can offer a competitive advantage and contribute to revenue growth, profitability, and customer retention.
Enabling Data-driven Culture: Effective data governance can promote a data-driven culture within the organization where decisions are made based on evidence and analytical models rather than gut feelings or assumptions.
Aligning Business Goals: Data governance helps align data management with the overall business objectives, ensuring that data serves the organization's mission and strategy.

The Benefits of Data Governance

There are several benefits to implementing a robust data governance program:

Improved Consistency and Accuracy: A solid data governance framework maintains the quality and integrity of your data by ensuring it's accurate, consistent, and reliable. This is crucial in decision-making processes.
Enhanced Regulatory Compliance: Strong data governance can ensure businesses comply with regulatory standards and data privacy laws like GDPR and HIPAA, reducing the risk of penalties and legal issues.
Better Decision-Making: High-quality data leads to better, more informed business decisions. It provides accurate insights and analysis, aiding strategic planning and execution.
Increased Efficiency: Data governance eliminates data redundancy and inconsistencies, leading to more efficient business processes and operations.
Security and Risk Management: Data governance ensures data is secure through defined roles and responsibilities, achieved through astute risk management measures that prevent data breaches and reduce business risks.
Increased Trust: Well-governed data increases the trust of stakeholders, customers, and partners in the company's data and overall business practices.
Profitability: Better data management can lead to cost savings, improved operational efficiency, and, consequently, increased profitability.
Value Creation: Data governance can help businesses extract maximum value from their data, leveraging it for innovation and generating new revenue streams.
Improved Data Literacy: A culture of data governance promotes better awareness and understanding of data across the organization, enhancing employee data literacy.
Better Customer Relationships: A strong data governance strategy can help businesses better understand and serve their customers, improving customer relationships and increasing customer satisfaction.

The Challenges of Data Governance

Lack of Understanding and Awareness: Many organizations fail to comprehend the importance of data governance and its potential impact on their business operations. This lack of knowledge could be a major hurdle in implementing effective data governance.
Cultural Resistance: Employees may resist changes brought by data governance practices. This is especially common when new roles are introduced, or existing responsibilities are revised.
Inadequate Funding and Resources: Implementing a data governance program can be resource-intensive. Organizations may struggle to develop a comprehensive strategy without proper funding and resources.
The Complexity of Data: The sheer volume and diversity of data organizations manage can make data governance daunting. Additional complexity arises from the fact that data often resides in different systems and various formats.
Data Ownership Disputes: Within an organization, there may be disagreements about who owns certain data, who should be allowed to access it, and who is responsible for its quality.
Compliance with Regulations: Companies often face challenges aligning their data governance policies with existing privacy, security, and data handling regulations. Each regulatory requirement may carry its own rules, adding to the complexity.
Measuring the Success of Data Governance: Quantifying the benefits of data governance can be difficult, making it challenging to justify the investment to stakeholders.
Lack of Skilled Personnel: Data governance requires a specific set of skills. The lack of experienced staff can be a major challenge.
Technology Alignment: Aligning the right technology or software with your data governance efforts could be challenging. Not all technology solutions are one-size-fits-all or may not meet your specific governance needs.
Scalability: As data volumes continue to grow, so does the need for scalable data governance strategies. Organizations may struggle to adapt their data governance practices to the ever-increasing scale of their data operations.

The Best Practices of Data Governance

Define Clear Goals and Objectives: Understand the purpose of your data governance initiative. Are you trying to improve data quality, achieve regulatory compliance, improve operational efficiency, or make better decisions? Clear goals guide your governance activities.
Obtain Executive Sponsorship: Effective data governance requires buy-in from the top. Without this buy-in, your initiatives may lack the necessary authority and support to succeed.
Assign Roles and Responsibilities: Determine who in your organization will be responsible for data governance tasks. Common roles include data owners, data stewards, and data custodians.
Develop a Data Governance Framework: This should provide guidelines on how data governance will be executed, including the processes, standards, metrics, and roles involved.
Establish Policies and Procedures: Define rules for how data will be captured, stored, processed, shared, and disposed of. Ensure these policies are compliant with relevant laws and industry regulations.
Classify your data: Having a data classification solution in place can help automate the application of data governance policies, something that can be essential, especially when compliance needs are constantly changing.
Prioritize Data Quality: Establish procedures to ensure the accuracy, consistency, completeness, timeliness, and relevance of your data. Implement data validation processes and utilize data quality tools.
Encourage Cross-Functional Collaboration: Data governance is not just an IT issue. It involves all departments of an organization. Encourage collaboration and communication across different units.
Implement Technology Tools: Use data governance software to automate governance tasks such as data cataloging, data lineage mapping, and policy enforcement.
Regular Audits and Reviews: Review your data governance practices regularly to ensure they deliver the expected outcomes. Audit your data quality, compliance with policies and procedures, and efficiency of your data governance processes.
Provide Training and Education: Educate your staff about the importance of data governance, their roles and responsibilities, and how to comply with policies and procedures.
Embrace a Continuous Improvement Mindset: Data governance is a journey, not a destination. Be open to refining your practices as your organization's needs evolve.
Foster a Data-Centric Culture: Encourage a culture where decisions are backed by data, fostering a sense of trust and reliance on the data being collected and used.
Data Stewardship: Appoint dedicated data stewards to own and execute data governance roles, acting as champions and caretakers of data.
Data Lineage: Understand and trace where your data comes from, how it moves throughout the organization, and how it's transformed, giving you constant visibility over its lifecycle.

Partner with Fortra For Your Robust Data Governance Framework

The immense volume and diversity of data organizations manage require a comprehensive approach to ensuring robust data quality, stewardship, protection, and compliance.

Schedule a demo with Fortra to see how we can help your organization get better control of its assets by preserving the integrity of your company’s data.