Same as a librarian is responsible for the organization of collection of books in a library, similarly businesses must also have a set protocol for managing the information which they collect when doing business. But not being able to find or protect this collected data makes for a dangerous situation.
Most of the companies hire someone who have a degree in library science to help them organize the data, which is only a part of what is needed. Your business needs a plan of action, for you to maintain the integrity of the data, protect it and also make it available when needed. This above-mentioned plan of action is called data governance.
What is Data Governance?
Data governance helps the business or organization with a plan to make sure that their data is available, secure, consistent and usable. This plan also includes creating certain processes which provides accountability to make sure that the data management is effective. Which further means that the data is not corrupted in any way and can be used by everyone in the business or organization.
A person who is called the data steward oversees these processes for data governance, by making sure that the established guidelines for it are being followed. The data steward also monitors the process and suggest some improvements which are needed, mostly with the project management software for information technology.
Data governance is holistic in nature as it involves the people, processes and the information technology department of a business. The data governance is tasked to create a consistent use of the data available across the whole enterprise.
Need of data governance in business:
Data governance has some goals which helps the business or organization to accept the process of data governance. The availability of data governance in a business will help the business with the management of their data and also provide them with certain goals of data governance which comes with it. Some of the goals of the data governance are as follows:
- Security: One of the main goals which the data governance provides the businesses with is the plan of security. The plan of security includes defining and verifying the requirements of the data distribution policies. Other than that, it also maintains the vigilance against the outside cyber-attack, crashes which would compromise sensitive data and the equipment failure.
- Profitability: It is no secret in the organization that the data is monetized and the data governance help makes the most of the potential income for the business. There is always potential data of a business for them to make money but you require the data governance for that.
- Accountability: To ensure that the data is being governed to support these goals and others, there must be answerability or accountability with the business. So, a person is appointed to manages, monitor and reports the business on the quality of information.
- Availability: To make for the better and productive employees of a business, you need to have the data available for those who need that in the business. They must face less hurdles, more secure and accurate data, the better their quality of work will be.
- Decision-making: The data governance will also help the business of organization to make good decisions. They will help the decision makers more confident because the decisions are based on the reliable and consistent data.