Understanding Why We Govern, What We Govern, How We Govern

Every Data Governance adoption must start with clarity of the messaging on the three essentials – the why, the what, and the how we govern.
1) The "What" of Data Governance - What does Data Governance Adoption bring to your organization, and what is the desired goal?
2) The "Why" of Data Governance – Why are you embarking on a Data Governance Adoption Journey, and why now?
3) The "How" of Data Governance – How are you planning to engage Governance in your organization, and how are you going to achieve the desired outcome?

It is fundamentally important for every organization embarking on a data governance journey to start by sensitizing its data citizens on the "WHY" of their data governance adoption. Understanding the reason your organization has decided to embark on a data governance adoption (your problem statements and the end in mind) is the number one responsibility of every data leader hoping to succeed in the cultural transformation of its people and processes. The focus of your Data Literacy is to shine the light on your organization's decision to position the health of your data as the number one priority to build a competitive edge. Equipping and empowering your data citizens to help actualize this end in mind by getting their alignment of understanding to boost and accelerate the journey.

Why We Govern:
The compelling reasons for the "WHY of your governance" are in your driving problem statements as an organization. It's ultimately in how much your poor-quality data is costing you, your competing data demand, and endemic data issues. Fact: Your "why" is unique, and your "why" must resonate with your organization and your people. The value-add of sensitizing your data citizens with the "why" of your adoption is limitless, i.e., it earns you great credibility with your people to feel appreciated that they're critical to the journey's success. There'll be little resentment to engage and participate in the journey once your data citizens have a holistic picture of the end in mind and realize it's a win-win for them and the organization to succeed. You gain natural advocates to help carry the vision and propagate your adoption within their data community. Hence, the beginning of your desired cultural transformation and a step in the right direction.

What We Govern:
Data Governance is a unique discipline set up to help you address the "why" of your data problems with its standards of care methodology to treat your many prevailing data problems such as: 

• Lack of formalized accountability of due diligence around data creation, engagement, and consumption.
• Ambiguity in the purpose and usage of data by various consumers across the enterprise.
• Lack of transparency around the origin and journey of data, making it hard for the true source of data without a defined authoritative point of consumption.
• Lack of enforced controls and weakness in existing quality rules and leakages in the data journey
• Lack of cumulative stewardship of due diligence and handshakes around the data journey across its value chain
• Lack of standardized process to track identified issues around data, prioritization, and remediation of the same.
• Lack of sustainable measures to prevent the re-occurrence of earlier resolved quality issues and aid the maturity of Governance in place once instituted.

How We Govern:
We govern by addressing each of our "why" of Governance in a prioritized way to achieve our end in mind. To this effect, the following are some of the unique offerings of Data Governance to address most of the data issues in a systemic manner.

• We establish "Ownership" to resolve the lack of accountability.
• We're intentional with "Metadata Management" to resolve ambiguity in the usage of data across the enterprise.
• We establish "Lineage Management" to create transparency around data along its value chain.
• We establish a strong "Data Quality Rule Management and Monitoring" process to promote higher data quality for trusted data and measure the success of quality rules in place as an ongoing cadence.
• We develop a strong and effective Issues Management amd Resolutions process to track the occurrence and resolution of issues, making sure issues are rightfully tracked, owned, managed, and resolved efficiently as they come along.
• We build a solid "Change Management" process to establish a cadence for managing changes on governed data once preventive care is in place.

Speaker: Lara Gureje

Lara Gureje is a highly motivated, disciplined, and passionate data leader with an outstanding track record in Data Management, Risk Reporting, and Analytics, a domain expert and highly sought speaker on current trends in Data Management, Data Governance, and Insightful Analytics.

Lara is the author of a recently published Data Governance book, "Turning Data Into Fortunes, The Ultimate GuideBook For Recognizing, Optimizing and Governing Your Data Asset."

Previously the Vice President and Head of Data Governance and Stewardship at Bank of the West/BNP Paribas Group, she is currently a Founding Partner/Head of Data and Analytics at DatOculi – a Data Governance and Stewardship Management Consulting Firm helping organizations succeed in building cumulative responsibilities around their data asset for regulatory compliance, operational efficiency, and revenue growth.