Organising the Organisation

Data Governance

Data governance is a system of decision rights, accountabilities and processes aimed at improving the quality, availability, usability and security of an organisation’s data. Data governance is as important to an agency as any other corporate, business or IT governance process. It ensures that people who collect, manage and use data understand their responsibilities and how their work contributes to organisational objectives and outcomes. Agencies with good data governance practices are better able to understand and manage risks for their data, while extracting the maximum value from them.

When an agency implements the IDMF, it is important to establish robust data governance as a key agency process and responsibility. This includes identification of key executive sponsors, skills and capabilities, allocation of responsibilities and authorities and establishment of organisational processes and procedures.

The NSW Data Governance Toolkit is a valuable resource designed to assist NSW Government agencies to develop their own data governance capability, and it can be applied to the development of data governance arrangements in an infrastructure data program context.

The Toolkit outlines a Data Governance Model that specifies data governance activities across four tiers:

• Strategy and Planning – agencies should define the program’s values, vision and mission.
• Organisational Structures, Roles and Responsibilities – agencies need to ensure accountability and decision-making authority for data-related activities are appropriately assigned and formalised.
• Organisational Enablers – agencies need to ensure there is a strong motivation to achieve good governance within an organisation as well as the requisite capabilities, in terms of people and technologies.
• Data Management – agencies need to ensure their data governance program comprises the core data management functions, such as data quality, data security, metadata etc, as outlined in the Data Management Body of Knowledge (DAMA-DMBOK).