Beyond Data Governance in the Digital Business

The traditional distinction between governance planning and implementation won’t work for data-driven digital businesses.

Data governance raises difficult questions within business and IT. Both parties affirm the importance of high quality data, but neither sees how to achieve it based on their current understanding of data governance. In many cases, the buck is passed, and overall progress is slow.

We need a new way of thinking about the topic if data-driven digital business is to succeed.

Data governance is a set of rules, processes, behaviors, and organizational structures and responsibilities for information creation and use. Their actual implementation in tools and technologies is usually called data management and considered a separate topic. In his book Data Governance, John Ladley maintains this split is necessary from organizational and process viewpoints because it separates oversight and action. Oversight is a business responsibility; action may be taken by business users and/or IT, supported by appropriate tools.

Accordingly, today business defines accountabilities and processes for ensuring quality data, often through the identification of data owners and appointment of data stewards. Given the complexity and disparity of much business data, IT has assumed the primary responsibility for hands-on management of data quality.

This strict division of labor is problematic in digital business. As I wrote in Business unintelligence, virtually all business innovation now arises from information and technology. Information — and the technology to support its management and use — is the business and vice versa. The boundaries between IT and business must disappear. I say use the word information (what the business needs), rather than data (what IT usually produces), to emphasize what digital business actually requires. Furthermore, a focus on information alone is too narrow. Despite a name that emphasizes data, digital business also demands fundamental process changes.

Today it makes more sense to consider oversight and action as two ends of a gamut of processes needed to ensure data quality and information reliability. I’ll use the term information and process governance (IPG) to cover this range.