Today’s organizations generate massive amounts of data, and simply storing and securing that data is not enough to ensure systems run smoothly and safely. Data governance is an absolute necessity for any organization, and one of the most proactive things your company can do—interestingly enough—is develop a passive data governance strategy.
Passive data governance monitors the data that already resides in enterprise systems and identifies and remediates instances that are exceptions to data rules. This practice not only enforces data rules but also protects the quality of existing data, ensuring systems and day-to-day operations run smoothly and according to protocol. But enforcing passive data governance requires cooperation throughout an organization to work effectively, and BackOffice Associates, which handles information governance and data migration solutions, recently wrote an article outlining the steps to a proper passive data governance strategy.
One of the most important things an IT department can do to implement a successful passive data governance plan is to ensure high-level executives are on board. Recruiting executives is a win-win since they benefit from more and better data, which can help them assess the performance and objectives of the entire organization. That data also aids with everything from sales to operations to human resources initiatives, and executives can in turn help IT teams by getting lower level departments on board with the plan.
Measuring and managing the quality of data is another essential component of a successful passive data governance plan. And this begins by defining those data attributes associated with executives’ and workers’ key performance indicators (KPIs). Once rules have been determined, reports may be run against them, as long as rule enforcement processes are both scalable and repeatable. Results may then be saved and examined and measured over time to assess overall performance.
Data quality metrics are also an important part of the process, and are closely tied to KPIs. But failed data and missteps are equally important, and a good passive data governance system will alert organizations’ to failures and erroneous data so they can institute changes. Remediation is also a key step in the governance process, ensuring failed data notifications are acted on accordingly. An effective system will alert data owners of failure and give them an opportunity to alter data and resubmit it to ensure it passes the validation rules properly.
Ultimately, instituting a passive data governance strategy is just plain good for business. Not only does it help IT departments ensure data is in line with rules and protocols, but it gives executives actionable insights that can help with all aspects of running their organization.
Edited by Alisen Downey