Data Governance
The system of decision rights, accountability, policies, standards, and controls used to manage data as an organisational asset.
Effective governance improves trust, reuse, compliance, and accountability while reducing duplicated data, unclear ownership, and inconsistent definitions.
An organisation assigns owners to customer-data domains, defines shared terms and quality rules, approves access by purpose, tracks lineage, and records exceptions through a governance forum.
Governance can become bureaucratic if disconnected from delivery. A data catalogue alone is not governance, and central policies fail without domain participation, measurable controls, and enforcement.
Governance defines ownership and stewardship, classification, quality expectations, access, metadata, lineage, retention, privacy, security, acceptable use, issue resolution, and lifecycle controls. It coordinates people and decisions; technology supports but does not replace it.
AI Governance, Cybersecurity
DAMA International — DAMA-DMBOK — https://www.dama.org/cpages/body-of-knowledge; IBM — Data Governance — https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/data-governance
