Don’t drown your data governance programme

Discover the growing importance of data governance across industries, from banking to retail and telecommunications in South Africa. Learn how a balanced approach, addressing business, technology, and governance pillars, can unlock the true value of your enterprise data.

Data governance seems to have made the transaction from a niche requirement for highly regulated industries, such as banks, to a mainstream discipline across multiple industries.

In South Africa, we are seeing the beginnings of data governance programs in industries ranging from mining to retail, to utilities and telecommunications.

Data governance as an Enabler

In some cases, these governance programmes are being put in place to support enterprise MDM or similar data-intensive projects, but in many cases, they are being driven by the realisation that the impact of uncoordinated, dysfunctional or ad hoc data improvement projects is exposing the business to unnecessary risk and cost.

Don’t drown in Administration

What most of these initiatives have in common is that they have a strong focus on the administrative aspects of data governance – defining policies, roles, structure, and the like, but frequently do not focus on the technical and business aspects that must also be addressed.

don't let administration overwhelm data governance

In many cases, this leads to a loss of interest from nominated data stewards and other business stakeholders, as the administrative aspects consume resources and energy without necessarily delivering tangible results.

The administrative aspects of data governance are important, but they should not be allowed to become overwhelming.

Three Pillars of Data Governance

There are three pillars of data governance that must be coordinated in order to achieve business benefits.

Business Pillar

The business pillar must focus on the business-centric activities that ensure the alignment of data governance to achieving business objectives – these include business processes, business rules, metrics and stewardship.

Technology Pillar

Technical data governance puts the tools in place to enable the business objectives – data quality, metadata management, data modelling and the like.

Governance Pillar

The governance pillar puts the data governance framework – people, process and structures – in place to support the business.

A balanced approach supporting all three pillars is necessary to properly understand business requirements, develop sensible strategies and ensure that the right skills, people and groups are involved at the right time in order to deliver the tangible results that are necessary to maintain interest.