Database Reference
In-Depth Information
An Information Governance Process
Information governance is a business strategy, not an IT project—you can't
just buy it, you have to live and breathe it, making it part of your business
processes and a core expectation that's put on the organization as a whole. As
such, it requires changes to both organizational processes and how people
treat information. In order to achieve the objective of trusted information, an
organization must embrace both technology and changes to process and the
way people work and are incented. It's impossible to achieve this objective
with change to just one. What's more, each ensures the success of the other.
A fully functional governance platform makes it possible to change processes
to proactively govern information, and a people-oriented focus will encour-
age them to embrace and adopt the new technology.
For the most part, the information governance process that was estab-
lished for traditional relational data works equally well for new sources of
Big Data, so we thought we'd briefly outline the key process steps for infor-
mation governance that you can use as a kind of roadmap for Big Data gov-
ernance.
1.
Identify the business problem to be solved.
It's imperative that a tactical
business problem be identified to drive adoption. The approach of
building technology first and driving business adoption second
never works. While this point isn't directly related to Big Data
governance, it's an “any” project imperative and it naturally pulls in
governance as a project-scoped topic.
2.
Obtain vocal executive sponsorship early on for the governance of any Big
Data project, thereby reaffirming the importance of governance for Big
Data projects across the organization.
This sponsor will typically be
closely related to the business problem. Because governance is truly
an enterprise-wide initiative, you'll want to evaluate whether the
sponsor has the political clout to push the importance of governance
into other projects across the enterprise. You'll also want to establish
an executive steering committee, to which you'll report your
progress on governing Big Data on a periodic basis.
3.
Determine what parts of the Big Data stream needs to be governed and to
what extent.
A critical first step of governance planning is
determining whether the data needs to be governed. Questions to
