What is Data Governance?
Data Governance involves the organisation of people, processes, and technology to enable effective data management.
Facets of Data Governance include:
- Roles and responsibilities, including custodianship, stewardship, and general data literacy.
- Technologies, systems and tools to enable data discovery, quality, provenance and lineage, supporting capabilities including integration, analytics, and business intelligence.
- Processes and controls implemented to support the security, consistency, integrity and privacy of data.
- Policies, procedures and standards to support regulatory compliance and ethical use, providing clarity over responsibilities throughout the data lifecycle.
- Data quality—including metadata and information security—to ensure accuracy and reliability of data.
The goal of Data Governance is to determine a holistic way to control data assets so the organization can optimize the value of its data. Data Governance is a subset of data management, and is essential in supporting and enabling effective day-to-day management of data.
Why is Data Governance important?
Data Governance increases the value of an organization’s data and enables effective data management. The further benefits include:
- Increased visibility, discoverability, and accessibility of data.
- Improved quality and reliability of data.
- Promoting transparency and responsible use.
- Better management of the increasing volume and variety of data.
- Providing standardized systems, policies, procedures and standards, and consequently providing clarity over roles, expectations and requirements.
- Supporting regulatory compliance and information security.
- A supporting and enabling function for overall data management.
Data Governance at UQ
At UQ, Data Governance is defined through the Information Management Policy and Information Governance and Management Framework. Two key aspects you should know are:
- Discoverability of UQ’s data: Data models exist for all data across UQ’s landscape. The Information Entity Catalogue provides a high level overview of the Information Domains at UQ, and the different Information Entities within each domain. Further detail is available at conceptual and logical levels.
- Roles and responsibilities: Everyone has a part to play in UQ’s data landscape. Learn about the different data governance roles that exist, and the responsibilities for each role.
How can we help you?
The Data Strategy and Governance team at UQ is available to assist you with all things Data Governance! Some key areas include:
- Data access and sharing: UQ Corporate Data Sharing Agreements detail requests for UQ data and is used between Information Consumers (who request the data) and Information Stewards (who review the request for data). Read more about Data Sharing Agreements and when you might need one, and obtain the necessary forms to submit a request.
- Data models: The team is constantly engaging with different business areas and projects with data requirements to further develop conceptual and logical data models. If you can’t see the data you’re after, or you’d like further logical data modelling undertaken for your area, please contact the team and they’ll be able to assist.
- Specialist advice: Have a curly Data Governance question, or want some subject matter expertise advice? The team are always happy to help.
