Data Governance Content Operations

There is a great deal of data governance content that needs to be managed and curated. This requires operations. You probably have a goal to increase your data governance content on a regular basis. If so, then you will need to identify who is performing the work, methods they are using (or should be using), and the processes/technology necessary to get the job done. This blog post will discuss data governance content operations, examples of content, necessary parts of the operation (people, process, and technology), benefits, and oversight committee involvement.

Content operations is the combination of people, processes, and technology that allows an organization to maintain its data governance content effectively and efficiently from start to finish. Operations involves the strategy, creation, publishing, distribution, and management of content.

Examples of content include functional definitions, technical definitions, report/ETL/dashboard specifications, data policies, data requests/resolutions, data quality issues/resolutions, data system information and reference data.

Data governance content operations has 3 parts:

1. People: who is performing the data governance content-related tasks and what their roles and responsibilities are (data stewards). In content and content operations, the people are the foundation. Roles and responsibilities should be well-defined and outlined to keep the system running smoothly.
2. Processes: what processes are needed to complete the data governance content successfully. Your team, and their roles and responsibilities, will help determine workflows to keep your content moving from inception to completion. Style guide, templates, and data governance content guidelines strengthen processes and promote accountability and consistency. By having these items in place along with technology ensures content operations run smoothly.
3. Technology: what tools help build out a data governance content operations system.  An organization needs to use technology, such as the Data Cookbook solution by IData, for successful data governance content operations. You need to have a knowledge base where the content is located and is accessible by all the necessary players. You need technology that can take in requests and issues so that they can be routed to the appropriate person for resolution.

Every data user (data content creators and data consumers) benefits from having data content operations in place. The benefits are:

• Saving time and money - operations leads to efficiency and efficiency saves time by reducing the time needed to get data governance content created, approved, and published.
• Better quality content - operations creates standards which leads to standardization and higher quality data governance content.
• Producing content faster - operations provides clearly defined request processes and a knowledge base so that data governance content is produced quicker.
• Happy and confident teams – when staff is unhappy or confused about their roles, responsibilities, or resources, their work may reflect it.

A data governance oversight committee (or whatever name the organization uses for data governance / data intelligence management) manages the operations of the data governance content to ensure that the necessary people, processes, and technology execute the content strategy. The data governance oversight committee might also be responsible for:

• Choosing the technology and tools to support operations
• Creating and managing organization data policies and procedures
• Streamlining data governance content processes
• Recruiting and hiring data governance content creators such as data stewards
• Training new staff members regarding data governance content

There is great benefit to having data governance content operations in place. Hope that this blog post helps you in getting great data governance content. To understand data governance content operations, think about the people, processes, and technology involved. If the right people (such as data stewards) are in place, with knowledge of the processes and access to the right technology, the data governance content operations of an organization should run smoothly and successfully.

Additional data governance resources (blog posts, videos, and recorded webinars) can be found at www.datacookbook.com/dg.

IData has a solution, the Data Cookbook, that can aid the employees and the organization in its data governance, data intelligence, data stewardship and data quality initiatives. IData also has experts that can assist with data governance, reporting, integration and other technology services on an as needed basis. Feel free to contact us and let us know how we can assist.

Photo Credit: StockSnap_H3DZM3GCEN_ContentOperations_FarmRows_BP #B1214