DATA GOVERNANCE
OVERVIEW
Prepared by OMES Information Services
Data Governance Program Office
Table of
Contents
1 Mission and Workflow
What is Data Governance? 2
Why Data Governance? 3
Data and IT Governance 4
Framework 5
Structure 6
Process Stages 7
Success Stories 8
Focus, Takeaways and Contacts 9
This publication is issued by the Office of Management and Enterprise Services as authorized by Title 62, Section 34. Copies have not been printed but are available through the
agency website. This work is licensed under a Creative Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
OMES Data Governance
Program Office
The Data Governance Program Office is a service-oriented office that helps State of Oklahoma agencies begin data
governance programs and provides process monitoring, document auditing and ongoing support once the programs
are established.
Mission
Support Oklahoma’s data governance efforts by providing education, materials, resources and services that
ensure the state’s data assets are the highest quality, managed appropriately and accessed securely for decision-
making and policymaking.
Workflow
1
What is Data Governance?
A Process, Not a Project
Data governance is an organizational process and a structure. It establishes responsibility for data, organizing
program area staff to collaboratively and continuously improve data quality through the systematic creation and
enforcement of policies, roles, responsibilities and procedures.
• Data governance is used to define the decision-making processes around data.
• Data governance is a strategic, long-term process.
• Data governance usually appears in an organization when it reaches a certain maturity level.
It adds rigor and discipline to the process of managing, using, improving and protecting organizational information.
Effective data governance can enhance the quality, availability and integrity of data by fostering cross-
organizational collaboration and structured policymaking.
2
Why Data Governance?
Tighter Informational Control
Data governance builds opportunities and reduces risks of data breaches, privacy violation, distributing bad data.
Information quality
Having agencywide data standards, definitions and coordinated effort will improve data quality.
Ability to integrate
Well-defined data management processes allow an organization to be proactive and integrate with
organizational changes or developments at a reduced cost and with limited burden.
Performance management and business intelligence
Defining clear ownership of data, controlling data quality and implementing data management will reduce the
costs and complexity of performance management and business intelligence.
Establish new rules and processes
Creating and implementing standard, formalized rules and processes is key to ensuring data are trusted,
secure and ultimately fit for business usage.
Align or modify the existing rules and processes
Assessing existing rules and processes to ensure they are accomplishing the purpose intended and modifying
them if needed.
Richer data environment and regulatroy compliance
Overall, data governance leads to a richer data environment and ensures regulatory compliance.
3
How Does Data Governance
Fit Into IT Governance?
Data governance complements project governance. Both exist under the overarching structure of IT
governance.
• Project governance focuses on defining a portfolio of investments, setting performance
objectives, and evaluating and managing risk for IT projects.
• Data governance focuses on creating a structure enabling an organization to align data
management efforts to business objectives, to support regulatory compliance and to manage
risks associated with data.
• IT governance is the overarching structure that focuses on IT infrastructure, including
managing resources and risks, to ensure IT efforts and solutions align with the organization’s
mission and business goals.
To borrow an analogy commonly used by the data management community: IT governance focuses
on the pipelines in the organization’s IT infrastructure, data governance and project and portfolio
governance focus on the water that flows through those pipelines.
4
Framework
• WHY your specific program should exist.
• WHAT it will be accomplishing.
• WHO will be involved in your efforts, along with their specific accountabilities.
• HOW data governance processes will be achieved.
• WHEN specific data governance processes will be performed.
Data governance helps to define overarching rules by coordinating, weighing and balancing the needs of all
stakeholders through identifying:
• A decision-making process.
• Roles and responsibilities of stakeholders.
• Rules and processes consistent across organization.
A data governance framework allows organizations to “decide how to decide.” It outlines how to make decisions about
managing data, realizing value from it, minimizing cost and complexity, managing risk and ensuring compliance.
In short, data governance sets the rules of engagement for data management activities, and the framework is the
workflow for those rules of engagement.
From the execution side, a data governance framework touches every part of the data management process down
to the individual technologies, databases and data models. The framework also affects the processes people use to
create and retain data and how these rules are replicated within applications to help make smarter decisions faster.
The best part about a data governance framework is organizations never start from scratch. There are typically
pockets of data governance underway, and new efforts can tap into those to find leaders, supporters and advocates.
5
Structure
This is a basic data governance committee structure. Escalation flows up the pyramid with the executive leadership
having decision-making authority, and implementation flows down the pyramid with the data stewards being the
subject matter experts and best suited to implement processes and changes to data.
This structure allows organizations to clearly identify decision-making authority at all levels.
6
Process Stages
Discover
• Current state of data and processes.
Define
• Data definitions and business context.
Policies
Rules
Standards
Processes
Measurement Strategy
Apply
• Operationalize.
• Ensure compliance with data definitions.
Measure and Monitor: If you aren’t measuring data quality, then you cannot manage it.
• Effectiveness of program.
• Value of program.
• Track and monitor compliance.
• Audit data quality.
7
Success Stories
Success Story No. 1: Maricopa Integrated Health System — Arizona
The health organization is the largest, uncompensated caregiver in Maricopa County with over 23 health facilities
spanning the south-central region of the state. It consists of a burn center, five level-one trauma centers, the Arizona
Children’s Center, a refugee women’s health clinic, 14 family health centers and a cancer center.
The system was experiencing significant data challenges related to data quality and reliability. Information silos, data
latency, data ownership and lack of enterprise tools were problematic. In some instances, the issues were evident,
such as data discrepancies between enterprise patient registries and the refugee women’s clinic patient database.
Since common information is no longer reproduced in multiple systems, MIHS no longer has to research, validate and
reconcile data discrepancies.
The implementation of data governance has resulted in reduced costs, improved cost effectiveness and increased
regulatory reporting accuracy.
Before Data Governance: After Data Governance:
• Information silos led to the inability to share data. • Data are shared from single source and are
• Data discrepancies between databases. reliable, useful, accessible and timely.
• Data ownership issues. • Data are no longer reproduced in multiple
• Lack of enterprise tools. systems and are complete, current, precise and
• Poor data latency led to issues with real-time relevant.
access to data. • Reliable reports are consistent and accurate.
• Poor data quality made it unreliable and
inaccurate.
Success Story No. 2: State of Oklahoma Department of Education
Before initiating data governance, the education department and districts completed a survey to gauge the quality of
the pipeline of data coming into the agency. The issues mirrored those experienced by the Maricopa Integrated Health
System.
Most data issues organizations experience are not unique. By drilling down into those issues, an organization can
determine the areas where it needs to focus and determine the outcomes of the data governance program.
The education depatrment’s data governance program focused on gaining a better understanding of its data and
finding opportunities to reduce the reporting burden on districts.
The implementation of data governance has resulted in reduced costs, reduced reporting burden on districts and the
agency, and increased regulatory reporting accuracy.
Before Data Governance: After Data Governance:
• Information silos led to the inability to share data. • Better understanding of data across the agency
• Data discrepancies between databases. led to improved state and federal reporting and
• Data ownership issues. accessible data that could be retrieved in a timely
• Lack of enterprise tools. manner.
• Poor data latency led to issues with real-time • A reduction of duplicate data collection reduced
access to data. the burden on districts and produced higher
• Poor data quality made it unreliable and quality data.
inaccurate. • Reliable reports are consistent and accurate.
8
Focus and Takeaways
Focus Possible Focus Areas
Data governance programs should have a focus that • Policy, standards and strategy.
will change over time. Identifying focus enables an • Data quality.
organization to more easily set and prioritize goals, create • Privacy, compliance and security.
a clear path to meeting those goals and mature over time. • Architecture and integration.
• Business intelligence.
• Management support.
Takeaways
1. Data governance is the practice of making strategic and effective decisions
regarding the organization’s information assets.
2. The scope of data governance needs to be carefully defined and can be very wide
or narrow depending on an organization’s need.
3. Data governance requires specific expertise.
4. Management and leadership involvement is critical for success.
Most organizations start with a mass of information that can be compared to a ball of
thread. To untangle the ball and create a single source of truth, organizations must follow
each strand and determine what should be kept and what should be discarded. This takes
time, focus, attention and resources.
Data governance provides many hands to untangle that ball of thread, reducing the time,
burden and resources necessary to create a rich, stable data environment.
Contact Us References
Autumn Felty, Data Governance Program Manager Thomas, G. (2014). How to use the DGI data governance
[Link]@[Link] | 405-522-0718 framework to configure your program [White paper].
Retrieved from [Link]
Tonette Woody, Data Stewardship Facilitator content/uploads/2014/11/wp_how_to_use_the_dgi_
[Link]@[Link] | 405-522-4253 data_governance_framework.pdf.
McKesson. (2015) Maricopa Integrated Health System
uses data governance to align the enterprise, increase
productivity and deliver on its mission. Retrieved from
[Link]
resources/case-studies/learn-how-to-use-data-
governance-to-align-the-enterprise-and-increase-
productivity/.
