How to Scope Your Data Governance Program

This blog is for you if you are responsible for the data governance program in your organization. To ensure your program is scoped correctly, ask yourself the following questions. These four simple questions will narrow the data to that which is truly important, tied to your strategic goals, and ensure that your governance program is right-sized. We can also use this exercise to help us prioritize on-boarding of data into the governance umbrella.

1.  What is the primary business of my firm, and what data is required to execute? All endeavors have primary business activities that drive revenue. For each of these there are certain pieces of data or data sets that are necessary for that business to function. That data must be in scope.
2. What data is required to meet organizational and regulatory metrics and reporting? It does not matter what type of work your organization is involved in. There are bound to be internal, and potentially regulatory reporting requirements. That data must be high quality and high integrity, and therefore under your governance scope.
3. Is there data not identified above, that is necessary to be able to achieve or measure achievement towards my firms top-line goals? Often, our corporate goals are part and parcel to our primary business, but at times we have strategic goals that run parallel to the business or may be directed to a new business function. Therefore, we use this question to ID data that is critical from a forward looking perspective.
4.  What are the data sets that are the subject of on-going data integration efforts or master data management operations? Identify that data and match it to what was identified above. If it’s a match, great – we’ve already identified the scope. However, if this reveals data not already identified then we have to ask how important this data is, and should it be in scope.

If you want to learn more about the specifics around our data governance program solutions, please contact us today.