Navigating the Organization to Ensure Data Governance - Data Governance: Creating Value from Information Assets - page 25

Data
Governance
Council
Data Governance Oce
Data Stewards
FIGURE 2.1
Data governance structure.
stakeholders. Depending on the size of the organization, multiple gover-
nance organizations may roll up in a hierarchical manner. Existing man-
agement groups that have tangential function to data governance may
need to be included as well as leveraging existing council, committee, or
steering groups for data governance.
Business ownership of corporate data encompasses the overarching
definition of data governance, the business-driven policymaking, and
oversight of corporate information. Data is owned by the business, which
circumscribes its definitions, rules, access, and usage policies.
The next level is the data governance office, which coordinates data gov-
ernance (strategic) and stewardship (tactical) activities. This layer typically
manages communications from the steering council to data stakeholders.
This is the most critical part of the data governance organization translat-
ing the phenomenon of meaningless, unavailable, duplicated, siloed data
into an information-cleansing, integration, and deployment strategy that
serves the organization. This layer provides oversight, manages risks, and
assesses compliance on data assets. It helps in acknowledging the business
problem, scoping the project, and leading to definable measures that can
prove the value of data governance.
At the lowest level are data stewardship teams in each functional area,
which provide guidance to individual data stewards. This is often a feder-
ated function, while the two higher levels are usually more centralized.
However, there are constant interactions between these three levels of
the data governance structure as people at one level represent their team
to the next level, as in the case when a data stewardship team escalates