Data Governance
Data Governance is a comprehensive approach that comprises the principles, practices and tools to manage an organization’s data assets throughout their lifecycle. By aligning data-related requirements with business strategy, data governance provides superior data management, quality, visibility, security and compliance capabilities across the organization. Implementing an effective data governance strategy allows companies to make data easily available for data-driven decision-making while safeguarding their data from unauthorized access, and ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements.
Key Elements of Data Governance
- Data cataloging
Effective data governance requires knowledge of the data that exists within an organization. This is where a data catalog comes in, as it provides a centralized metadata repository for an organization’s data assets. A data catalog allows stakeholders to quickly discover, understand and access the data they need, improving data-related activities such as discovery, governance and analytics. It acts as a searchable index of all the data available, including information about its format, structure, location and usage, providing semantic value to an otherwise unidentifiable sea of information. Incorporating a data catalog into a governance program can help organizations improve their data management, enhance collaboration, reduce redundancy and ensure proper access controls and audit information retrieval.
Why is Data Governance so important?
-
It can be a colossal waste of time when not done correctly— Think about organizing a library with no books.
-
It is foundational to data.
-
It can save significant time and money when done correctly.
-
It can help with the rapid adoption of new technologies or strategies.
-
Mismanagement of data is a liability for an organization — Data that gets into the wrong hands represents real business risk.