What are your best practices for monitoring data governance performance?

Data governance is the process of ensuring that your data is accurate, consistent, secure, and compliant with your business goals and policies. But how do you know if your data governance efforts are effective and delivering value? You need to monitor and measure your data governance performance using appropriate metrics, tools, and techniques. In this article, we will share some of our best practices for monitoring data governance performance and how they can help you improve your data quality, efficiency, and trustworthiness.

1 Define your data governance objectives and KPIs

Before you can monitor your data governance performance, you need to define what you want to achieve and how you will measure it. Your data governance objectives should align with your business strategy and vision, and your key performance indicators (KPIs) should reflect the outcomes and benefits of your data governance activities. For example, some common data governance objectives are to improve data quality, compliance, security, accessibility, and usability. Some possible KPIs are data error rate, data lineage coverage, data breach incidents, data catalog usage, and data satisfaction score.

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Steph Calley, BSc MBA

Head of Data Governance at University of Bath
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Linking to business KPIs is great as it gets your senior team on board, but you may alienate your Data Stewards, or those working more more operationally on data. Linking a cost or time saving initiative (like reducing manual intervention) to a KPI will ensure all parties are happy. You've moved the dial slightly on the KPI, and have made your Stewards' lives easier - winning all round.

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moath alsoqair

Data Mangement | Data Governance | Data Strategy | Data quality | NDMO
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I agree, clear data governance objectives aligned with your business strategy and measured by relevant KPIs are essential for ensuring the effective management and value maximization of your data.

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2 Choose the right data governance tools and technologies

To monitor your data governance performance, you need to have the right tools and technologies that can collect, analyze, and report on your data governance metrics. Depending on your data governance maturity and needs, you may use different types of tools and technologies, such as data quality tools, data lineage tools, data catalog tools, data governance platforms, dashboards, and reports. You should choose the tools and technologies that best suit your data governance framework, architecture, and standards, and that can integrate with your existing data sources, systems, and processes.

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moath alsoqair

Data Mangement | Data Governance | Data Strategy | Data quality | NDMO
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In my opinion to effectively monitor data governance performance, it is crucial to employ appropriate tools and technologies that align with your organization's data governance framework, architecture, standards, and integration requirements. For instance, if your data governance strategy prioritizes data quality improvement, you might choose data quality tools like Informatica Data Quality or Talend Data Quality to collect and analyze metrics related to data accuracy, completeness, and consistency, ensuring they integrate seamlessly with your existing databases and processes.

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3 Establish a data governance dashboard and report

One of the most effective ways to monitor your data governance performance is to create a data governance dashboard and report that can provide a comprehensive and visual overview of your data governance metrics and KPIs. A data governance dashboard and report should be designed to communicate the status, progress, and value of your data governance initiatives to your stakeholders, such as senior management, data owners, data stewards, and data consumers. You should use clear and consistent definitions, formats, and visualizations for your data governance metrics and KPIs, and update your dashboard and report regularly and frequently.

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moath alsoqair

Data Mangement | Data Governance | Data Strategy | Data quality | NDMO
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Creating a data governance dashboard and report is a highly effective means of monitoring data governance performance as it offers a clear, visual representation of key metrics and KPIs, serving as a vital communication tool for stakeholders including senior management, data owners, stewards, and consumers. Ensuring clarity and consistency in the definitions, formats, and visualizations of these metrics is essential for meaningful insights, and regularly updating the dashboard and report is crucial to keeping stakeholders informed and maintaining the relevancy of data governance initiatives.

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4 Conduct data governance audits and reviews

Another important way to monitor your data governance performance is to conduct data governance audits and reviews that can assess the effectiveness, efficiency, and compliance of your data governance processes, policies, and roles. A data governance audit is a formal and independent evaluation of your data governance practices and controls, while a data governance review is a periodic and collaborative assessment of your data governance performance and improvement opportunities. You should conduct data governance audits and reviews at different levels and intervals, such as project, program, or enterprise level, and quarterly, annually, or ad hoc.

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moath alsoqair

Data Mangement | Data Governance | Data Strategy | Data quality | NDMO
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I agree, monitoring data governance performance effectively involves conducting regular data governance audits and reviews, which provide formal evaluations and periodic assessments to gauge the efficiency, compliance, and overall effectiveness of data governance processes, policies, and roles at various organizational levels and intervals.

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5 Solicit feedback and suggestions from data stakeholders

A final way to monitor your data governance performance is to solicit feedback and suggestions from your data stakeholders, such as data owners, data stewards, data consumers, and external parties. Your data stakeholders are the ones who are directly involved or affected by your data governance activities, and they can provide valuable insights, opinions, and recommendations on how to improve your data quality, security, compliance, and usability. You should collect feedback and suggestions from your data stakeholders through various channels and methods, such as surveys, interviews, focus groups, forums, and workshops.

Monitoring your data governance performance is essential to ensure that your data governance efforts are aligned with your business goals and expectations, and that you are delivering value and benefits to your data stakeholders. By following these best practices, you can monitor your data governance performance effectively and efficiently, and identify and address any gaps, issues, or risks in your data governance processes, policies, and roles.

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moath alsoqair

Data Mangement | Data Governance | Data Strategy | Data quality | NDMO
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Gathering feedback and suggestions from data stakeholders, plays a crucial role in data governance performance. being directly involved or impacted by data governance activities, offer valuable insights into enhancing data quality, security, compliance, and usability. Employing diverse feedback collection methods such as surveys, interviews, focus groups, forums, and workshops ensures that data governance efforts align with business goals and meet stakeholders' expectations, thus delivering tangible value and benefits. These best practices enable effective and efficient data governance monitoring, facilitating the identification and resolution of any gaps, issues, or risks in data governance processes, policies, and roles.

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6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?

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Jayakumar Rajaretnam

Lives and breathes DG, DM, TOM, Data & Analytics
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Given the focus on mesh and fabric by organizations, the ongoing monitoring of data governance should take these emerging concepts into consideration. Mature organizations that have an operational DG office in place, should tune the existing metrics to include data literacy, data transparency and data monetization as part of their KPI/metrics. Those who are setting up the DG practice, should create metrics that are nimble and SMART to start with and add more (complex) metrics over time to ensure better adoption and sustainability.

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What are your best practices for monitoring data governance performance?

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1 Define your data governance objectives and KPIs

2 Choose the right data governance tools and technologies

3 Establish a data governance dashboard and report

4 Conduct data governance audits and reviews

5 Solicit feedback and suggestions from data stakeholders

6 Here’s what else to consider

Data Governance

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What are your best practices for monitoring data governance performance?

1

2

3

4

5

6

1 Define your data governance objectives and KPIs

2 Choose the right data governance tools and technologies

3 Establish a data governance dashboard and report

4 Conduct data governance audits and reviews

5 Solicit feedback and suggestions from data stakeholders

6 Here’s what else to consider

Data Governance

Rate this article

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