data governance is an umbrella term encompassing several different disciplines and practices, and the priorities often depend on who is driving the effort. Chief data officers, privacy officers, security officers, and leaders in risk management usually focus on the privacy, security, and regulations that drive data governance programs. Data scientists, marketers, devops leaders, and business analysts are more likely to focus on proactive data governance, including data catalogs, data integration, data quality, data lineage, customer data profiles, and master data management.
There’s much to unpack in all the terms, practices, and technologies, and some capabilities and objectives overlap. Shams Chauthani, CTO and senior vice president of engineering at Zilliant, agrees that because there are multiple objectives, collaboration between business stakeholders, IT, and data teams is key to successful programs.
“Data governance is often treated in a compartmentalized way, mostly as a compliance requirement managed by IT,” he says. “In today’s digital age, data is the biggest asset, and to treat data governance as a siloed effort run exclusively by IT is a disservice to the entire organization. For organizations to fully deliver the promise of smarter decision-making with data, the data governance process must be continuously improved with engagements from all stakeholders.”
For this article, I consulted with industry experts to identify what devops leaders and teams should know about data governance and how they can contribute to its goals.
Grant Fritchey, devops advocate at Redgate Software, suggests that engaging stakeholders is just the start. “Data governance is everyone’s responsibility,” he says. “You can’t simply assign a person or a department the job of data governance and expect success. Data governance has to become a part of what everyone in IT does as a part of their jobs.”
One way to achieve the required collaboration and define responsibilities is to connect data governance directly to employee workflows. John Milburn, CEO of Clear Skye, says, “Data governance is not so much a technical function as it is a people and processes one. That’s why it’s critical that your governance solution aligns with employees’ existing workflow, or else it’s bound for failure.”
Devops teams should look for opportunities to improve dataops, including automations to support data integration, cataloging, and quality. John Wills, field CTO at Alation, says, “The new generation of data governance is active, catalog-led governance–meaning it’s vital for all knowledge workers including devops and dataops teams and is part of their daily work.”
Immuta CEO Matthew Carroll shares one key reason for top-down buy-in for data governance programs. “We’re seeing a major shift in the data management and governance landscape as more consumers become aware of their privacy rights due in large part to new regulations. As a result, organizations are grappling with how best to protect data assets and adhere to privacy regulations while attempting to scale and derive value from their data faster, ultimately driving a need for more digitized data policies and automated cloud data access and security.”
Barr Moses, CEO and cofounder of Monte Carlo, agrees.
