What is Data Governance and why is it important?
As we all know, today’s world is filled with data. Wherever you look, wherever you are, data exists and is a big part of what we do and how we operate. For organisations and modern businesses the management of data and how they use it is becoming a critical part of that organisation’s success.
Whilst many people recognise that data needs to be governed it is often unclear how to do this or where to start. Who should take responsibility for implementing this can also be a source of confusion.
Perhaps you are already well aware of data governance and its importance, and maybe you are already implementing your carefully constructed data governance strategy. Wherever you are in the process it can always be helpful to take a step back and we hope that this article offers some insight to help you with your next steps.
First, let’s take a deeper look at what data governance really is:
What is Data Governance?
In very simple terms, data governance is a set of principles, practices, standards and metrics that help an organisation to manage their data effectively. Together these principles, practises, standards and metrics help to ensure that data is consistent, reliable and trustworthy enough to drive business decisions, business initiatives and business needs and goals.
Data governance ensures that an organisation has control over their data and that their data is well protected. It outlines the processes, policies and responsibilities that ensure the quality and security of data across the organisation.
What is a Data Governance Framework?
A data governance framework outlines what an organisation needs to do in order to implement data governance. It’s essentially ‘how’ to carry out data governance and consists of the guidelines and definitions that an organisation must set up and enforce for data governance.
A data governance framework will focus on all the key elements that enable an organisation to make best use of its data and information, in order to achieve its business goals. This will include the data itself, the processes around it, policies, communications, standards, metrics and tools that are used to handle and manage the data.
A good data governance framework will also include a strategic, tactical and operational view as well as clearly outlining roles and responsibilities.
Why should we care about data governance?
There are several reasons why we all need to think carefully about data governance and actually too many to list here. There are also numerous advantage to implementing data governance well which we will aim to cover in another article, however, here let’s look at 3 big reasons why data governance is really important:
1. Poor quality data
Without data governance the one thing that can be guaranteed is poor quality data. Without clearly defined standards, processes and policies in place, there is no structure or order in how the data is managed leading to inconsistencies, potential duplication of data and work, missing data, errors in the data and much confusion.
2. Potential chaos and confusion
Without clearly defining who is meant to do what and when, in relation to the organisation’s data, there may well be a sense of chaos amongst teams and staff within the organisation.
However, with good data governance in place, this often promotes better cross-functional decision-making and communication across teams and across the organisation.
3. A security risk
A lack of data governance is also a security and compliance risk because without accurate and structured data it is virtually impossible to monitor any issues that may arise from it.
Data governance ensures that it is possible to monitor an organisation’s data properly and to ensure that it meets all regulatory and compliance laws.
What does that mean for my organisation?
Hopefully from the above, we all now have a better understanding of what data governance is and why it’s important. Let’s now look at what that means for you and your organisation.
Data governance is vital for any data-driven organisation. It is also something that must evolve as an organisation grows and changes. So, if you have yet to give data governance much thought, now is definitely the time to get started.
Data governance will also become more and more critical as the reliance on data to fuel business decisions grows. Even if you already have a data governance framework set up, it will be important to keep reviewing and re-evaluating each aspect of it, as your business needs change.
We hope that this brief introduction and overview of data governance has given you some ideas around what data governance encompasses and why it’s important to get right. If you’d like to share your experiences with data governance or want to discuss how we can help you with your specific data governance needs, do get in touch with us or see our Data Governance page.
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