Creating and Implementing a Data Governance Policy

Patrick Brewer

As a data professional with 25+ years’ experience with SQL Server, I’ve witnessed many organizations that don’t have a Data Governance Policy, don’t understand the importance of having one and, most of all, don’t know how to implement one.

Understanding the contents of a Data Governance Policy shows its immense value and the importance of implementing such a policy. I will cover Data Governance and the topics that make up the Data Governance Policy including: data quality, data storage, data security, data lineage and data issues/resolutions.

I’ll also talk about how the Data Governance Policy plays into other significant topics such as: Data Modeling, Naming Standards, Coding Standards, and the importance of a Data Dictionary.

Implementing a Data Governance policy is tricky, and I’ve seen methods that range from “Blunt Force Trauma”, that turns professionals off, to the “Stealth” mode, where the policy is implemented behind-the-scenes. As data, the use of data, and the tools manipulating data become more complicated, organizations need to implement policies that govern how data is managed.