Considerations to Deliver Good Data Governance

With the current data economy, organizations want to enable ubiquitous data for their workforce. Growing privacy regulations and increasing data security threats influence how you enable and govern your organization's data. Figuring out the right data governance model is, therefore, something that organizations have to get right.

In its simplest form, data governance aims to meet compliance, maintain quality, protect data and apply policy during the entire lifecycle of the data. Several principles and practices form the backbone of data governance. Data governance is so complex and important that a new function "DataGovOps" is emerging. To understand and implement data governance, let's start with a few important considerations:

Classify and categorize

At the heart of efficient data governance lies the need to establish the right data hierarchy. Different types of collected data would fall into varying levels of importance. Hence it is essential to classify and categorize that data as early in the chain as possible. Data classifying is a crucial first step toward establishing good data governance.

Map data flow

To create the right data governance program and implement all the relevant data governance best practices, you must first carefully examine the role of data in your workflow and its impact on your business. 

Protect and secure

You must then capture legal requirements, compliance requirements, and company policies on data privacy and security. Similarly, a security plan that makes your data adequately secure while not stunting your ability to access or analyze the data is essential.

Get a handle on data storage

Your data would be spread over multiple locations, including on-premises, cloud storage locations, and hybrid storage environments. Based on where the data is stored, the need for governance and tools available changes. 

Include data backups as well

Strong data governance must include data backups. You must understand the schedules and recovery processes. Governance will require a good understanding of the exact number of copies of data, how long they are meant to be kept, and who has access to them. 

Align with major transformations

Additionally, if your company is undergoing any major transformation, such as Cloud Migration, your data governance plans will depend on those large initiatives. If governance is not already part of such initiatives, aligning data governance to the proposed strategy will be more effective.

When you grasp these considerations, you will have a good foundation for data governance.