Data governance framework: the practical version

The reason governance stalls is almost never a missing framework. It is that the scope was never bounded, so the work has no end and no visible progress.

This is a way to bound it. Three parts: a short list of what you govern, three tiers of control matched to how much a mistake would cost, and a table of who decides what.

What to take away

Part one: bounding the scope

Governed concepts qualify on one of three grounds, and nothing else does.

Run that filter over your reporting estate and you will typically get somewhere between ten and forty concepts. That is the governed list. Everything else is ungoverned by an explicit decision, which is a very different state from being ungoverned by neglect, and the difference matters when something goes wrong.

Publish the list. A concept's presence or absence on it answers most of the questions people would otherwise ask a committee.

Part two: three tiers of control

The label on the open tier is the piece that carries the most weight. People misuse ungoverned data because nothing told them it was ungoverned, and a one-line marker on the artifact prevents more incidents than any policy.

Promotion between tiers should be easy and demotion should be possible. A concept whose annual review has not happened in two years should drop a tier automatically, which is uncomfortable and effective.

Part three: who decides what

Two properties make this table work. Every row has exactly one decider, and every decision has a place it is recorded. A row with two deciders is a row where nothing gets decided.

The roles, kept to three

Concept owner. Sits in the business, not in the data team, and would have to change something if the definition changed. Owns the definition and the restatement decision.

Data steward. Sits close to the systems and maintains the records: definitions written down, lineage current, tests running. The formal description of a data steward covers this well, and the role is often part of somebody's week rather than a job.

Governance group. A small standing group with the authority to name owners, ratify definitions, and grant exceptions. It should meet briefly and decide something every time.

Larger structures exist and most organizations do not need them. The general discipline is well described as an overview of the field, and the federal data strategy practices are a useful public example of how a large body states its principles without turning them into a program.

A twelve-month sequence that works

Quarter one: draft the governed list, publish it, and settle one contested concept end to end.

Quarter two: settle three more, and stand up the role-based access model so that access stops consuming the group's time.

Quarter three: add quality tests to the governed concepts, one meaningful test each, and start the change notice habit.

Quarter four: run the first annual reviews, demote what has gone stale, and publish what changed.

By the end you have a small number of properly governed concepts and a working process. What you will not have is a catalog of the whole estate, and that is the correct trade.

Related reading on this site

Governance substance is in data governance, and its failures are in nine governance mistakes. The build order sits inside the six layer model.

For definition work at the governed tier's center, see writing a metric definition; for parallel tiering of published artifacts, see the three publication tiers.

Common questions

How do we choose between ten governed concepts and forty?

Take the ten that cause arguments this quarter. Forty is achievable later and unachievable as a starting point, and a list that is never completed teaches everyone that the list does not matter.

Our data team wants to own the definitions. Is that wrong?

It is wrong in the sense that it will not hold. A definition owned by the data team gets overridden the first time a business leader disagrees, because the data team cannot decide what the business means by its own concepts.

What happens when nobody in the business will take ownership?

Escalate once, with the specific concept named and the consequence stated. If it still finds no owner, drop it off the governed list and label it openly as ungoverned. That is honest and it usually produces an owner within a month.

Should the framework be documented before we start?

One page, published, and revised as you learn. A framework written in full before any concept has been settled is a prediction rather than a description, and it will be wrong in the parts that matter.