Data Gov­ernance: The Key to Achiev­ing Data Excellence

Data Gov­ernance (DG) is defined by the glob­ally recog­nised organ­isa­tion Data Man­age­ment Asso­ci­ation Inter­na­tional (DAMA) as “the exer­cise of author­ity and con­trol (plan­ning, mon­it­or­ing, and enforce­ment) over the man­age­ment of data assets. Every organ­iz­a­tion, regard­less of whether they have a formal DG func­tion, makes decisions about their data. How­ever, those that estab­lish a formal DG pro­gram gain greater con­trol and inten­tion­al­ity over their data processes”.

Data Gov­ernance tech­no­logy pro­viders often expand on this defin­i­tion by integ­rat­ing spe­cific tech­nical areas and fea­tures such as a data cata­log, data qual­ity, data pro­fil­ing, data lin­eage, and issue track­ing into their offer­ings. Nev­er­the­less, while these defin­i­tions cap­ture the essen­tials, the true value and impact of DG on day-to-day data man­age­ment can some­times remain unclear.

In essence, DG is much more than a the­or­et­ical exer­cise. It plays a fun­da­mental role in driv­ing data excel­lence, elev­at­ing an organisation’s abil­ity to man­age, pro­tect, and fully lever­age its data resources.

The Tan­gible Bene­fits of Data Governance

Let’s explore the tan­gible advant­ages of imple­ment­ing effect­ive DG:

Data Con­sump­tion

Total trust in an organisation’s data products, like reports and data­sets, is essen­tial to achieve a col­lab­or­at­ive, data-driven cul­ture within an organ­isa­tion. With effect­ive DG in place, users across depart­ments can rely fully on the avail­ab­il­ity and qual­ity of the data they con­sume. By ensur­ing data products are avail­able, access­ible, under­stand­able, and of high qual­ity, DG builds this trust and strengthens data-driven decision-making.

High avail­ab­il­ity involves pre­vent­ing devel­op­ment and deploy­ment issues from reach­ing the pro­duc­tion envir­on­ment, ensur­ing users do not exper­i­ence any ser­vice inter­rup­tions. Easy access is guar­an­teed by equip­ping users with tools that help them to dis­cover and retrieve exist­ing reports built and shared by oth­ers. Being under­stand­able means provid­ing users with tools to cla­rify the busi­ness ele­ments, logic, and data sources related to and used within each data product.

Data Man­age­ment

For tech­nical teams, DG enhances effi­ciency in the devel­op­ment, test­ing, deploy­ment, and troubleshoot­ing of data products. It enables seam­less col­lab­or­a­tion amongst developers, pre­vent­ing work­flow con­flicts and allow­ing smooth code trans­itions across envir­on­ments whilst adher­ing to pre­defined pro­cesses and approval require­ments. What’s more, DG per­mits quick root cause ana­lysis and effect­ive impact assess­ment, assist­ing tech­nical teams in tra­cing issues back to their source and in under­stand­ing how changes in data affect down­stream processes.

For busi­ness users, DG trans­forms data plat­forms from opaque “black boxes” into trans­par­ent sys­tems. Rather than guess­ing how data is con­nec­ted to busi­ness ele­ments, DG allows for clearer link­ages between busi­ness data assets, such as key per­form­ance indic­at­ors (KPIs), crit­ical data ele­ments (CDEs) and data domains, and tech­nical data, such as applic­a­tions, tables, columns, mod­els and reports. This trans­par­ency not only builds trust but also empowers busi­ness users to make informed decisions based on well-gov­erned, high-qual­ity data.

Data Oper­a­tions

DG also fosters a well-struc­tured data envir­on­ment by assign­ing clear roles and respons­ib­il­it­ies to all parties involved in the data life­cycle across the organ­isa­tion, includ­ing data own­ers, data con­sumers, data stew­ards, and other data manip­u­lat­ors. This ensures that every­one work­ing with the data knows how to get the most out of it whilst main­tain­ing its integ­rity and quality.

Estab­lish­ing roles and respons­ib­il­it­ies, a chal­len­ging task for many organ­isa­tions, becomes sig­ni­fic­antly easier and more effect­ive when approached with the under­stand­ing that the goal is not to cre­ate a new organ­isa­tional chart, but to form­al­ise and provide proper con­text to exist­ing roles already engaged with data. It is not merely a the­or­et­ical exer­cise; these roles and respons­ib­il­it­ies are dir­ectly linked to spe­cific data assets, includ­ing both tech­nical and busi­ness-related data.

DG also fosters a uni­fied data cul­ture by ensur­ing con­sist­ency in defin­ing, man­aging and using key busi­ness data assets, such as KPIs, CDEs, data policies, frame­works. and best prac­tices across the organ­isa­tion. This align­ment min­im­ises mis­un­der­stand­ings and errors by ensur­ing all depart­ments inter­pret and use data consistently.

In short, busi­ness teams bene­fit from DG bey­ond data ana­lyt­ics and report­ing. It enhances their day-to-day oper­a­tional tasks, whether they’re work­ing within trans­ac­tional sys­tems or shar­ing data both intern­ally and extern­ally. This is par­tic­u­larly rel­ev­ant for data qual­ity, as an effect­ive data qual­ity strategy ensures that high stand­ards are main­tained not just for ana­lyt­ics and report­ing, but also for gen­eral data use across vari­ous sys­tems and departments.

Pri­vacy and Security

Com­pli­ance with data pro­tec­tion reg­u­la­tions, such as the Gen­eral Data Pro­tec­tion Reg­u­la­tion (GDPR) and the Cali­for­nia Con­sumer Pri­vacy Act (CCPA), is a crit­ical com­pon­ent of DG. Effect­ive gov­ernance ensures that sens­it­ive data, includ­ing Per­son­ally Iden­ti­fi­able Inform­a­tion (PII), is prop­erly masked and pro­tec­ted from unau­thor­ised access, both internal and external, in all exist­ing envir­on­ments and across all data products, includ­ing reports, data­sets, tables, and columns.

Gov­ernance prac­tices dic­tate who has access to data, sys­tems and spe­cific com­pon­ents within sys­tems, safe­guard­ing the organ­isa­tion against data breaches and ensur­ing com­pli­ance with legal stand­ards. Proper data gov­ernance also ensures that these pri­vacy and secur­ity policies are applied uni­formly, min­im­ising risks and main­tain­ing the integ­rity of sens­it­ive inform­a­tion across all assets.

How to Suc­cess­fully Imple­ment Data Governance

Imple­ment­ing DG is inher­ently com­plex, primar­ily because it impacts busi­ness areas and data sys­tems across the entire organ­isa­tion. Addi­tion­ally, for long-term suc­cess, its organ­isa­tional, func­tional and tech­nical com­pon­ents must seam­lessly integ­rate into the daily oper­a­tions of the busi­ness teams, so a suc­cess­ful DG imple­ment­a­tion hinges on deliv­er­ing tan­gible, out­come-focused solu­tions that are closely aligned with real busi­ness needs.

Here at synvert we’ve developed a proven approach to ensure a suc­cess­ful imple­ment­a­tion, based on robust deliv­ery prin­ciples, frame­works, and tem­plates. Our meth­od­o­logy centres on four crit­ical areas of gov­ernance, each essen­tial to a hol­istic DG policy:

Data Cata­log

A well-organ­ised data cata­log is fun­da­mental for improv­ing vis­ib­il­ity into your data assets. By enrich­ing metadata with inform­a­tion on data own­er­ship, clas­si­fic­a­tion and rela­tion­ships, we can ensure that both tech­nical and busi­ness users have a clear under­stand­ing of the con­text and struc­ture of the data they are work­ing with. This trans­par­ency builds trust in the data and means that teams can use it con­fid­ently across the organisation.

Data Qual­ity

Data qual­ity is at the heart of any DG ini­ti­at­ive. By defin­ing busi­ness rules, imple­ment­ing them in the right tech­nical data asset, and identi­fy­ing the res­ult­ing data issues, we can guar­an­tee that your data aligns with your busi­ness require­ments and spe­cific needs. Our approach focuses on uncov­er­ing the root causes of data qual­ity issues and then imple­ment­ing long-last­ing solu­tions, thus improv­ing the accur­acy and reli­ab­il­ity of the data and also pro­mot­ing con­fid­ence in its value through­out the organisation.

Mas­ter Data Man­age­ment (MDM)

MDM is key to cre­at­ing a single, author­it­at­ive “golden record” for core data entit­ies such as cus­tom­ers, products, and sup­pli­ers. By stand­ard­ising these core entit­ies across sys­tems and busi­ness units, MDM pro­motes data con­sist­ency and reli­ab­il­ity, mean­ing that all stake­hold­ers are using accur­ate, trus­ted data, no mat­ter where they access it.

DevOps for the Data Platform

Auto­mat­ing pro­cesses is essen­tial for cre­at­ing stable and reli­able data sys­tems, and with our DevOps approach, we can auto­mate the devel­op­ment, test­ing, and deploy­ment pro­cesses across all your data plat­form envir­on­ments, not only redu­cing manual inter­ven­tion but also ensur­ing faster and more reli­able data oper­a­tions, enhan­cing the over­all effi­ciency and sta­bil­ity of your data plat­form as well as the robust­ness of your data gov­ernance initiative.

Each of these gov­ernance areas plays an import­ant role in the seam­less, long-term integ­ra­tion of data gov­ernance into your organ­isa­tion. Focus­ing on action­able use cases within these defined gov­ernance domains, DG will become an intrinsic part of your day-to-day oper­a­tions, driv­ing trust, con­sist­ency, and oper­a­tional excel­lence across all busi­ness units.

Con­clu­sion

If you’re look­ing to strengthen your data gov­ernance ini­ti­at­ives or need assist­ance, synvert is here to sup­port you. We can help eval­u­ate your cur­rent cap­ab­il­it­ies through a data gov­ernance assess­ment, imple­ment a com­pre­hens­ive data gov­ernance strategy that deliv­ers imme­di­ate busi­ness value, and set up new data gov­ernance tools like Pur­view, Inform­at­ica, Col­libra, or Atac­cama—includ­ing cre­at­ing ini­tial con­tent and enabling users.

We also offer ser­vices in imple­ment­ing data qual­ity solu­tions using exist­ing tech­no­logy or spe­cial­ised tools, enhan­cing data vis­ib­il­ity and con­sist­ency with a data cata­log or MDM solu­tion, deploy­ing DevOps and CI/CD solu­tions across all your devel­op­ment envir­on­ments, bench­mark­ing data gov­ernance tech­no­lo­gies to select the best tools for your organ­isa­tion, and devel­op­ing an action­able data gov­ernance pro­ject plan for seam­less integ­ra­tion into your daily oper­a­tions. Con­tact us now to drive data excel­lence and achieve sus­tained suc­cess in data gov­ernance across your organisation.