Data governance is the process of ensuring the quality, security, and accessibility of your data across your organization. It helps you make better decisions, comply with regulations, and optimize your business performance. But how can you improve your data governance without breaking the bank? Here are some cost-effective ways to do it.
The first step to improve your data governance is to understand your current situation. You need to identify the sources, types, and uses of your data, as well as the roles, responsibilities, and policies that govern it. You can use tools like data catalogs, data dictionaries, and data lineage diagrams to document and visualize your data assets and their relationships. You should also evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of your data governance framework and identify the gaps and risks that need to be addressed.
First of all, you need to assess your current status of the data governance. Analyze the different internal and external data sources. what are the security measures to ensure data safety. It should be clear who can upload modify, update delete the databases. A proper data dictionary should be maintained with terms and their inferences and compared. proper data relationships must be assessed. This is a very important step to ensure that you are taking adequate measures in right data governance
It's very helpful to build a table independent of any system, perhaps it can be internal to your HR system, that cross references the security groups in different systems to employees. This makes a good jumping off point for knowing who needs to be "governed" for what, at the department and division level as well.
The next step is to define your data governance goals and metrics. You need to align your data governance strategy with your business objectives and stakeholder expectations. You should also establish clear and measurable indicators of success and progress for your data governance initiatives. For example, you can use metrics like data quality scores, data usage rates, data compliance rates, and data value creation to track and communicate the impact of your data governance efforts.
The third step is to choose the tools and methods that will help you implement and improve your data governance. You don't need to invest in expensive or complex solutions that may not fit your needs or budget. You can leverage the existing tools and platforms that you already use for your data management and analysis, such as Excel, SQL, or BI tools. You can also use open-source or low-cost tools that offer data governance features, such as Apache Atlas, Collibra, or Alation. You should also adopt best practices and standards for your data governance processes, such as data quality audits, data stewardship, data security, and data ethics.
The fourth step is to engage your stakeholders in your data governance journey. You need to involve the people who create, consume, and govern your data in your data governance activities and decisions. You should also educate and train them on the benefits, principles, and guidelines of data governance. You can use tools like dashboards, reports, and newsletters to communicate and showcase your data governance results and achievements. You should also solicit feedback and suggestions from your stakeholders to improve your data governance practices and outcomes.
Ensuring that all the stakeholders are involve and well communicated about the data governance rules and groups will be helpful in keeping all of them in the same page. the idea is to keep them informed using frequent meeting, webinars, zoom calls etc. there are many tools available to automate this activity like jira board etc. make a good use of them. keep them engaged with all the updates and current status using documents and videos. have some feed back sessions, surveys ad questionnaires to know the pulse of the moment. use this data to do planning and make informed decisions.
The final step is to monitor and improve your data governance continuously. You need to measure and evaluate your data governance performance and impact regularly. You should also review and update your data governance goals, metrics, policies, and roles as your business needs and environment change. You can use tools like surveys, audits, and reviews to assess and improve your data governance maturity and effectiveness. You should also celebrate and reward your data governance successes and learn from your data governance challenges.
Data governance is not an event. it is a continuous process so make sure you keep on monitoring the current state and accommodate changes to improve the system in place. Analyze and review these rules and policies you made for continuous enhancements.