Defining Data Governance

Determining Priorities and Key Principles

The term “data governance” has been around for decades, but only in the last few years have organisations begun to understand what it means in the age of big data.

As data management and compliance become increasingly complex, organisations are finding themselves in uncharted territory. To overcome immediate challenges and achieve long-term objectives, a sustainable, scalable, and enterprise-wide data management strategy is essential. Many organisations are recognising that the foundation of such a strategy is data governance and are evaluating solutions accordingly.

The importance of data governance as a crucial data management mechanism is becoming increasingly apparent.

According to a recent CIO Water Cooler survey of senior IT leaders, 80% of respondents have only started implementing data governance in the past two years.

However, there may be significant variation in how these leaders define data governance and the initiatives they undertake. While business glossaries and data dictionaries are essential, a successful data governance program must be strategic and comprehensive to deliver maximum value.

This Precisely report answers common questions

To help you along your data governance journey, Precisely have prepared a report— Defining Data Governance: Determining Priorities and Key Principles. This primer is designed to provide insight into questions that many organisations have:

• How is data governance defined?
• When does the organisation need to implement data governance?
• What will be accomplished through data governance?
• Why is data governance important to the business?
• Who shares the responsibility and roles in data governance?
• Why does a foundation of data quality matter?

The fact is, data governance is often misunderstood, and misunderstanding often leads to underestimation. Executives hesitate to allocate scarce budget dollars to data governance initiatives without quantifiable value. However, an enterprise-wide approach to governance serves many purposes, not least among them the need to increase the value of organisational data assets—which can result not only in short-term operational impact but long- term returns.

In this whitepaper, Data Integrity leader, Precisely, delves into the benefits of adopting an enterprise-wide approach to data governance strategy. One of the key advantages is the ability to increase the value of organisational data assets, among other purposes.