Jeffrey Bader , Director of Analytics at Anthem, Inc.
The problem is that data is not static. While you may take a snapshot at any point in time it is the truth for that moment in time. Even if you have processes in place to manage the addition of data, change management of master and meta data and a set of guidelines – you can still end up with out of control data systems The root cause of this is the lack of governance, you don't currently have governance……. See why this is tough problem to solve? The solution prevents the problem but most organizations have no clue where to start or if they do start they may either fail or complete the effort but not have a transition plan to maintain governance once it is established and over time the organization finds itself back in the same or a similar state.
There are a number of things that a Data Governance can do. It all depends on risk, priorities etc. As part of the lineage exercise and purely by formation and communication of the council's existence – it is possible to start with a backlog of items to be addressed at the first meeting. So first and foremost – define how intake will work, how decisions will be made and how issues will be managed – the basics. Get the structure in place. Then make sure that you not only have a plan for today but that it is a flexible enough plan to be sustained over time. Because just as change is inevitable in data, the need for governance will not go away. Data governance councils will identify goals and priorities for achieving a level of proficiency across the organization which encompasses everything from policies and processes to monitoring and communications. Individuals outside of the governance council may approach the group with problems and findings which lead to investigations, studies and eventually standards for the management and handling of data. These standards will cover anything from data retention periods to best practices. The overall goal of the council is to ensure consistency in the collection, storage and delivery of data to support the business with cost effectiveness as a balancing factor.
If you walk into a room and mention governance, you can easily see that there are not a lot of people that will stick around for the conversation. Unless they have had the epiphany of how governance actually enables business and is not about locking things down and people out. There are concepts which have bad reputations – such as process and governance. These reputations are formed by bad implementations, overly zealous implementations or an inability to sustain the change over time. Worse yet, there are a lot of misconceptions about what governance actually is.
The first step in the governance lifecycle is to form a team. This team may not end up being the final governing body or governance board. But as you develop the concept of governance you will want to ensure that you have equal representation of all data producing, storing and consuming groups – in other words almost every team of the organization will have representation at the table. As mentioned, this is not necessarily the final governance team. What is important at the formative stage is that you form a team of individuals with working knowledge of the data.
While the initial team is compiling the data lineage they should also be assessing maturity. Maturity should not be assumed to be consistent across the enterprise nor should you consider that maturity would be consistent across any one lineage for a metric.
By now it is time to form the Governance Body – you can form this body at any point in the process, but for the most part, until there is an overview of the data environment and state of maturity, the Governance Body will mostly sit back and support the discovery process. Let's call this the Data Governance Council. The Council will be made up of representatives of each functional area of the organization. It is possible that there will be members that were part of the original working team that reside on the Council, or it could be there management.
Instructor: Ask – How do you define governance? Use this as an example of how individuals that make up the council will have their own definition of governance. As you can see – each one of you has different definitions of governance. This will also be true of the members of the council. Instructor: Ask – Why do you have the council define governance? Answers resemble the following: (you are looking for 2 major inputs) Establish a common definition Get all council members aligned to the definition As you can see, whenever you bring a group of people together of varying roles and backgrounds there is a likelihood that their definition of governance will vary. With that being said, it is important to have the council define governance to ensure that everyone has the same expectations. A shared definition of governance will only apply to this council for this organization at this time. Over time the definition may change and should be revisited each year.
The best way to revisit the definition to ensure it is still effective and applicable is to create a charter which includes the definition of governance.
Define a set of goals and expectations typically these align to the terms of the council. A reasonable set of commitments for the first year of a council would be to: Establish lineage Establish current level of maturity Identify optimal level of maturity to reach Define roadmap Execute 1 st year actions, etc. The important thing is to review progress regularly and identify when things get off track. Adjust the plan if it takes longer to achieve completion or if the outcome does not meet the expectations of the council. Don't wait until the end and let things slowly fall apart. The failure of a governance council often comes when success is assumed and not monitored. When defining the roadmap, it is important to think of the goals as being multi-generational. Additionally you will have to break down these goals into actions, accountabilities, responsibilities, constraints and dependencies.
6. What is data governance?