As mentioned in my previous post, I see more and more organizations that start to understand the potential value of their data as a key business enabler. In order to truly uncover the value of data it needs to be managed and controlled, or in other words, governed. Basically, no matter how small or ‘big’ your data, it all starts with data governance.

In a lot of publications it is already mentioned that implementing successful data management should not be an ‘IT exercise’, but requires a careful alignment between people, processes and technology. Effective governance requires not only defining organizational roles and responsibilities, but also defining policies and standards and the processes needed to enforce and maintain these. It also requires providing the right technology solutions, like workflow processes, data quality dashboards and a MDM repository. Having worked for many years in the data management area, I have learned that the people or organizational component in an organization often is the key which makes data governance a success or not.

The 3 key elements of data governance

Unfortunately there is no single governance solution that fits all, organizations have to build a governance model that closely follows its business practice and fits as closely as possible to its culture. Throughout various implementations, I have seen that there are 3 key data governance elements that should be present in any model, sponsorship, ownership and stewardship.

• Sponsorship is about active management support from both top-level senior management and management in business units. Successful data governance is achieved through the enterprise-wide communication of a compelling vision for change, setting performance targets and allocating appropriate resources and budgets. This vision needs to be supported by the senior management and business sponsors of the data governance initiative.
• Ownership is all about accountability of data (quality). Data is created and maintained to enable and support business, for example, vendors are created and maintained to support procurement processes. Therefore, it is the business who should drive and decide on requirements, standards, metrics and KPIs etc.