Recently we held a webinar regarding responsibilities of a data governance (data intelligence) leadership and oversight committee. Feel free to watch the recording here. We thought in this blog post we would cover these responsibilities.
Responsibilities include:
- Setting Roadmap and Priorities – An important responsibility of the committee is to set a roadmap and priorities for the organization to follow. Feel free to check out our 30 minutes recorded webinar on "Defining and Prioritizing the Scope of Your Data Governance Initiative".
- Getting and Maintaining Leadership Buy-in and Commitment – The committee should work on organizational buy-in (high-level goals) and commitment that could include financial support, resource prioritization and endorsement. Here is blog post on buy-in. The committee should share actionable goals with leadership. The committee should gather results supporting improved data-use, not just metrics on data government activity.
- Determining Data Steward Roles and People in These Roles – The committee should make sure people are only assigned to be data stewards when they are ready. We suggest you create a data steward matrix. For more information on this check out our webinar on "Pragmatic Data Governance and Role of Data Steward" and our blog post. Remember that this may require some job description changes.
- Serving as Backup or "Acting" Data Stewards When Needed – Committee members should assign themselves to unfilled or non-committed data steward roles. This can be a VERY powerful approach. This responsibility gets things done, avoids revolt by unprepared stewards, and keeps the process working.
- Getting Initial Content, Automation and Examples Created – The committee should make sure that your classifications and other data governance coding standards are defined. For data governance success you want to reach your content tipping point. Make sure that examples and templates are created to make data governance easier and facilitate automation where possible.
- Training Data Stewards and Other Data Governance Participants – The committee should focus on training in data governance goals, processes, and tools. Here is a blog post on training. The committee should support data steward activity including approval and review process and subject matter expertise input (authoring). Also the committee should be involved in training the broader community on data governance entry points. Here is a blog post on entry points. The committee should set goals and establish standards for responses. Here is a blog post on training.
- Reviewing Content of New Data Stewards for Feedback – The committee should add a non-required step to the review process for new data stewards. You should review only until they do not need it. The committee member reviewing should provide supportive and constructive feedback.
- Monitoring Requests and Data Governance Activity – The committee should help ensure timely responses for requests. The committee should have a customer service focus. Remember that broader buy-in will erode if response is not timely. The committee should provide support for data stewards that are stuck or unsure. The committee should have a team mentoring perspective. Data steward buy-in will erode if they are asked to do things they are not properly trained-in or given sufficient time and support. The committee can step-in to move along anything that needs it including content and project items. Sometimes you must just get it done. Remember to enlist new subject matter expert collaborators when needed.
- Resolve Collisions and Differing Opinions – The committee should be a be a point-of-escalation and manage disagreements: business glossary definitions, policy attribute classifications, quality rules and ownership. Remember that discovering differing opinions (collisions) is a good thing. The committee should foster a culture to allow for different context to co-exist. Feel free to check out our webinar titled "Managing the Collisions of Definitions".
- Expanding Scope When Ready – The committee should always be looking at data governance framework improvement (check out our framework blog post) and data governance content creation (check out our content blog post). And be looking at expanding organizational (add new functional areas), data system (add new data systems), and stakeholder (add additional people) data governance scope.
- Be the Champion – The committee needs to be the data governance champion and provide on-going training and buy-in activities such as: lunch-and-learns, webinars and outreach and train the trainers. The committee should measure and report on success towards high-level goals. The committee should create metrics, goals, and rewards for data governance activity. And the committee should have an updated organizational data governance web page(s) that everyone can access.
The data governance leadership and oversight committee plays an important role in data governance or data intelligence at an organization. We hope that this blog post and these 11 responsibilities help. Additional people-related resources regarding data governance and data intelligence can be found here.
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_GVUWVKUHZE_Meeting_OversightCommittee_BP #B1127
