Need for Data Governance
Data Governance and the Car Brakes Analogy
With data being the fuel of the digital economy, data governance is the much needed car brake!
Data and data governance
Data is an enterprise asset and data governance (DG) is about establishing policies, processes, rules, standards, and controls around data to improve the quality of data, ensure data security and privacy (Mahanti 2021a). However, organizations struggle to implement data governance and face a large number of challenges. These challenges either prevent the DG program from gaining ground in the first place or results in derailing the program at some stage after take-off.
As per Dr. John R. Talburt (Mahanti 2021a),
“The first adopters usually had to make 2, or even 3, attempts before seeing any success. However, like any new paradigm it takes time to iron out the wrinkles.”
Data governance and the car brakes
One of the challenges around data governance is that data governance is seen to be unnecessarily restrictive and is one of the reasons behind data governance resistance and failure in organizations.
Varun Pant, Director IT, Swati Consultancy Pty Ltd and National President, DAMA Australia posted an interesting statement in comparing data governance with car brakes on Linkedin on August 03, 2020. He stated (Pant 2020)-
“Data governance is like a brake in a car - it is not there to slow you down, but enables you to go faster, more safely.”
Brakes can be viewed as restrictive, but are necessary for a safe journey and their appropriate application can avert accidents. However, if applied when not necessary, they can slow progress (Mahanti 2021b). Like brakes in vehicles, data governance is also a necessity that can empower business.
Restrictive nature of data governance
Existing laws and regulations are being constantly revised and new laws and regulations are being created and enforced to prevent recurrence of economic disasters, corporate scandals and fraud. All organizations are constrained to comply by the laws and regulations; failure to do comply can be extremely costly. Data governance processes ensure that organizations manage and retain data as defined or required by the law and regulations, protecting the business from fines, penalties and reputational damage.
Regulations such as (but not limited to) Sarbanes-Oxley, Dodd-Frank, Basel II, and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) have challenged organizations to improve their data quality, and to create controls and formal accountability for data (Mahanti, 2021a). Control is important to ensure data protection and quality. Also, privacy and security cannot be attained without controlling and/or restricting accessibility and constraining people from what they can do with the data, reduce opportunities for the user, and reduce productivity levels (Chen 2017).
For example, data that was earlier accessible will now require following a process, which requires several levels of approvals before the users can get access to the same data. These processes and restrictions can be heavy, inflexible, time consuming, and may adversely impact operational efficiency as well as productivity (Mahanti 2021b)
A change in mindset is necessary to get buy in from all levels in the organization and change management supported by good stakeholder management, appropriate training and effective communication tailored to different organization levels is necessary to ease people’s journey into new ways of working, put out the anti-data governance fires and keep the spirit of data governance alive.
Concluding thoughts
In the digital world, where the economy is being driven by data, data governance is a “must have” to ensure organizations making the best of data. However, good governance must balance security, accessibility, productivity, and enablement (Chen 2017), and ensure that processes are streamlined to minimize accessibility cycle times (Mahanti 2021b) to ensure a less disruptive and more non-invasive data governance implementation in an organization.
This article draws significantly from the research presented in the books- Data Governance and Compliance and Data Governance Success published by Springer in 2021.
Note: This article was first published on QualityDigest.com in March 7 2023,
References:
Rupa Mahanti, 2021a, Data Governance and Compliance: Evolving to Our Current High Stakes Environment, Springer
Rupa Mahanti, 2021b, Data Governance Success: Growing and Sustaining Data Governance, Springer
Chen A (2017) Breaking data myths- highlights from Tableau CEO’s Keynote at #DATA17 Last accessed on Dec 26, 2017 from https://centricconsulting.com/breaking-data-myths-by-tableau-ceo-data17-keynote_cincinnati/
Pant V (2020) Linkedin Post. Last accessed August 5, 2020 from https://www.linkedin.com/feed/ update/urn:li:activity:6695938653677613056/?commentUrn=urn%3Ali%3Acomment%3A(act ivity%3A6695938653677613056%2C6695978205234520064)
Biography: Rupa Mahanti is a consultant, researcher, speaker, data enthusiast, and author of several books on data (data quality, data governance, and data analytics). You can connect with Rupa on LinkedIn or Research Gate (Research Gate has most of her published work, some of which can be downloaded for free) or Medium.