What are the best practices for data governance in a multi-cloud environment?

1 Assess your data landscape

Before you implement any data governance strategy, you need to understand your data landscape. This means identifying what data you have, where it is stored, how it is accessed, who owns it, and what value it provides. You also need to evaluate the risks and challenges of managing data in a multi-cloud environment, such as data fragmentation, inconsistency, duplication, security, and compliance. A data inventory, a data catalog, and a data quality assessment are some of the tools that can help you assess your data landscape and identify gaps and opportunities for improvement.

2 Define your data governance framework

A data governance framework is a set of policies, standards, roles, and processes that guide how data is created, stored, accessed, and used in your organization. It should align with your business objectives, data strategy, and data culture. A data governance framework should also address the specific needs and challenges of a multi-cloud environment, such as data integration, data portability, data sovereignty, and data protection. A data governance framework should be flexible, scalable, and adaptable to accommodate changing business and technology requirements.

3 Implement data governance tools and technologies

Data governance tools and technologies are essential for enabling and enforcing data governance policies and standards in a multi-cloud environment. They can automate, monitor, and audit data activities, as well as provide insights and recommendations for data quality and performance. This may include data integration tools to connect, transform, and synchronize data across different cloud platforms and services; data catalog tools to create a centralized repository of metadata; data quality tools to measure and validate the accuracy of data; data security tools to protect data from unauthorized access; and data compliance tools to comply with regulatory requirements. All of these are necessary for ensuring data consistency, availability, trustworthiness, usability, confidentiality, integrity, accountability, and responsibility.

4 Establish data governance roles and responsibilities

Data governance roles and responsibilities should be clearly defined and communicated across an organization and different cloud platforms. Data owners have ultimate authority and responsibility for the quality, security, and usage of data. Data stewards manage and monitor the data lifecycle, making sure it adheres to data governance policies and standards. Data consumers use data for analysis, reporting, or decision making. Lastly, data providers create or supply data for collection, processing, or distribution.

5 Monitor and measure data governance outcomes

Data governance outcomes are the results or benefits of implementing data governance policies and standards in a multi-cloud environment. They can be measured by using key performance indicators (KPIs), metrics, or benchmarks that reflect your business objectives, data strategy, and data culture. It’s important to monitor and measure these outcomes regularly to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of your data governance activities, as well as to identify areas for improvement or optimization. Data governance outcomes may include data quality, security, compliance, and value. Data quality refers to the accuracy, completeness, timeliness, consistency, and relevance of data. Data security involves protecting data from unauthorized access, modification, or loss through encryption, authentication, authorization, and backup. Data compliance ensures adherence to regulatory and legal requirements for data privacy, retention, and disposal. Lastly, data value measures the degree to which data contributes to the achievement of business goals such as revenue, profitability, customer satisfaction or innovation.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?