Ask the Data Governance Coach: All About Data Governance Committees
In this column, The Data Governance Coach answers the question “What is a Data Governance Committee and What Does It Do?”
Before I start to answer these two questions, I need to make clear that if you are implementing or about to implement a Data Governance Framework, then sooner or later you are going to need to set up a Data Governance Committee; but of course, you may not call yours a Committee. As I mentioned in my column about Data Owners, the titles of roles can be emotive and we need to be pragmatic about their use. The same is true for your Data Governance Committee. You may have a Data Governance Forum, Data Steering Group, or something similar. Whatever you call it is not important, it’s who sits on it and what it does that is important.
A Data Governance Committee is simply the forum where you get all of your Data Owners together. Now of course, that is an oversimplification; but it’s a good starting place. I’ve worked with some excellent Data Owners over the years, but it would be naïve to think that they could’ve run the Committee on their own. They are going to need some expert advice and guidance to help them make the right decisions about your company’s data.
These “experts” will include the following types of roles: your Enterprise Data Architect, the Head of Internal Compliance, and the Head of Operational Risk. In more than one client, the CIO has been an attendee. Deciding who you will invite as your experts will, of course, depend on the remit of your Data Governance Committee, which we will look at a little bit later. Before I move off the topic of expert advisors, I want to consider culturally how you will sell the concept of attending these meetings to the experts.
After all, by the time you set up your Data Governance Committee, you should have spent a considerable amount of time and effort identifying and engaging your Data Owners. You have succeeded in getting the agreement of senior roles within your organization to be accountable for the data quality of a number of data sets. Then you tell them that they can’t make decisions upon their data alone…
Depending on the culture of your company, this may not go down too well! In many organizations, this isn’t really an issue. However, with some of my past clients, to avoid any unnecessary tensions, the terms of the committee have made it clear that the Data Owners are the “members” of the committee, and are the only people who can make decisions. The “experts” are “attendees”; there to provide advice and guidance to help the Data Owners make their decisions. (Notice that I don’t say “the right decisions,” that phrase could also open up a myriad of tensions and issues!)
There are three more people who are key to the success of your Data Governance Committee:
Firstly, a strong chair person. I have seen it work successfully with this role undertaken by one of the Data Owners, but it is better if the Chair of the Committee is not a Data Owner themselves so that they can remain neutral if any heated debates ensue. Ideally this person will be the executive sponsor of your Data Governance initiative, that way they have a vested interest in making it work and they are in the right position to escalate issues to the Executive Committee if that is needed at any point.
Secondly, you should be there! I am of course assuming that you are the Data Governance Manager or the person leading the Data Governance implementation (whatever your title happens to be); if so, you need to be an attendee. You are key to reconciling the agenda with the Chair Person, and in the early days you will be presenting many proposals for activities you want to start or include in your Data Governance initiative to get approval from the Data Owners.
Finally, you are going to need some type of secretariat support for the Committee.
