Data governance is a unique capability in that it touches nearly all areas and people in an organization; as such, it requires buy-in from various teams to really ensure success.
Paola Saibene, principal consultant at Resultant, and Angela Jenkins, SVP of operational risk management at American National Bank of Texas, have laid out their top 10 ways to set up a data governance strategy for success. This is our second installment, you can see #1-5 in Part 1 here.
6. Mitigate data privacy risks and reduce time of proper implementation and maintenance to make data governance a hero.
How this helps:
Considerably reduces time, cost, effort, and cycle of understanding.
Anchors the practice with other risk-based functions to strengthen the overall profile of the organization and ease the auditing process.
7. Use existing change management efforts across the organization by infusing data governance and data literacy practices simultaneously.
How this helps:
Incentivizes data stewards to buy in because of the immediate professional development benefits.
When data governance isn’t connected in this way, you run the risk of employees viewing it as good for the organization without benefiting them personally, giving them less motivation to follow through.
8. Include data governance questions in your interviewing process to assess the candidate’s data knowledge and cultural inclinations to strengthen your workforce.
How this helps:
Puts the brakes on accelerating data awareness in organizational culture.
Candidates bring a mixture of talent and liability to the organization. A proper discussion on the level of understanding of data governance cuts down liability considerably from the moment of engaging a new team member while increasing the overall cultural maturity of data perception and understanding across the organization.
9. Stay on top of data trends.
How this helps:
Increases ability to match total outcome to effort.
Increases ability to match meaning to effort.
By staying alert and well-versed in data trends specific to their industry or sector, data stewards bring a fresh perspective and commitment to why data governance is important to upkeep and promote.
10. Have a clear understanding of what data means to your organization. Is it an asset, a product, or a service—or some combination thereof?
How this helps:
Clarity on this point helps properly allocate efforts and resources.
Defining needed dataset depth and maturity by purpose of data matches effort to the outcome and expected recognition.
Data should receive different treatments when it is an asset versus a product versus a service.
Watch the interview
Watch part two of Paola’s interview with Angela herefor more data governance insights:
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About the Author
Paola Saibene
Principal Consultant @ Resultant
Paola came to Resultant with 25 years of experience as an IT practitioner and five years experience as a consultant.
Her work in the public sector includes state oversight of 32 executive branches,...
