Defining DG: What Can Data Governance Do for You?

Data governance (DG) is becoming more commonplace because of data-driven business, yet defining DG and putting into sound practice is still difficult for many organizations.

The absence of a standard approach to defining DG could be down to its history of missed expectations, false starts and negative perceptions about it being expensive, intrusive, impeding innovation and not delivering any value. Without success stories to point to, the best way of doing and defining DG wasn’t clear.

On the flip side, the absence of a standard approach to defining DG could be the reason for its history of lackluster implementation efforts, because those responsible for overseeing it had different ideas about what should be done.

Therefore, it’s been difficult to fully fund a data governance initiative that is underpinned by an effective data management capability. And many organizations don’t distinguish between data governance and data management, using the terms interchangeably and so adding to the confusion.

Defining DG: The Data Governance Conundrum

While research indicates most view data governance as “critically important” or they recognize the value of data, the large percentage without a formal data governance strategy in place indicates there are still significant teething problems.

And that’s the data governance conundrum. It is essential but unwanted and/or painful.

It is a complex chore, so organizations have lacked the motivation to start and effectively sustain it. But faced with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other compliance requirements, they have been doing the bare minimum to avoid the fines and reputational damage.

And arguably, herein lies the problem. Organizations look at data governance as something they have to do rather than seeing what it could do for them.

Data governance has its roots in the structure of business terms and technical metadata, but it has tendrils and deep associations with many other components of a data management strategy and should serve as the foundation of that platform.

With data governance at the heart of data management, data can be discovered and made available throughout the organization for both IT and business stakeholders with approved access. This means enterprise architecture, business process, data modeling and data mapping all can draw from a central metadata repository for a single source of data truth, which improves data quality, trust and use to support organizational objectives.

But this “data nirvana” requires a change in approach to data governance. First, recognizing that Data Governance 1.0 was made for a different time when the volume, variety and velocity of the data an organization had to manage was far lower and when data governance’s reach only extended to cataloging data to support search and discovery. 

Data Governance Evolution

Modern data governance needs to meet the needs of data-driven business. We call this adaptation “Evolving DG.” It is the journey to a cost-effective, mature, repeatable process that permeates the whole organization.

The primary components of Evolving DG are:

• Evaluate
• Plan
• Configure
• Deliver
• Feedback

The final step in such an evolution is the implementation of the erwin Enterprise Data Governance Experience (EDGE) platform.

The erwin EDGE places data governance at the heart of the larger data management suite. By unifying the data management suite at a fundamental level, an organization’s data is no longer marred by departmental and software silos. It brings together both IT and the business for data-driven insights, regulatory compliance, agile innovation and business transformation.

It allows every critical piece of the data management and data governance lifecycle to draw from a single source of data truth and ensure quality throughout the data pipeline, helping organizations achieve their strategic objectives including:

• Operational efficiency
• Revenue growth
• Compliance, security and privacy
• Increased customer satisfaction
• Improved decision-making

To learn how you can evolve your data governance practice and get an EDGE on your competition, click here.

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