What is Data Governance Policy? Examples, Templates & Benefits

Components of a Data Governance Policy

The development of an ideal data governance policy is not just about writing a policy statement. While it is useful when developing and selecting elements to ensure that data is generally well managed within an organization. Here are the essential components of a strong data governance policy:

1. Purpose Statement: This is the “why” for this policy. They describe the fundamental objectives of the policy; it is meant to guard data, enforce compliance, or enhance data credibility.
2. Scope and Applicability: The policy needs to indicate what types of data it seeks to collect. Is all the data, therefore, within the organization? Just customer data? Financial data? To develop the contingency plan you need to decide on the coverage level and the information within the organization this policy targets.
3. Roles and Responsibilities: It is important to note that data governance is about people throughout the organization, not just about IT staff. The policy should define all the roles like data stewards, data custodians, and data users to key up who is allowed to do the handling and protection of data.
4. Data Definitions: To ensure that the meaning of these elements is not misconstrued, the policy should contain a glossary of terms as well as data types. This underlines that everyone is on the same wavelength about the use of data.
5. Data Access Guidelines: The policy must specify the formats wherein the data can be accessed together with specific persons who will have access to it. For sensitive data, this might include the use of a method such as multi-factor authentication, access control list, or data encryption.
6. Compliance and Monitoring: Each good policy should consist of compliance and monitoring arrangements. In as much as the organization is concerned with the formulation and implementation of policy, it is equally concerned with how this is accomplished in compliance with the policy. Many people may want to know what happens when an individual infringes the set rules and regulations. An organization should write in the policy regarding auditing; conducting a regular review; and the approaches that should be taken to deal with violations.
7. Data Retention and Disposal Procedures: Organizations need to define how long data should be kept and how data assets should be properly deleted to minimize compliance risks and expenses.

Data Governance Policy Examples

To help visualize what a good data governance policy looks like in practice, let’s take a look at a few examples of policies that organizations might adopt:

• Financial Institutions: In a bank, data governance can be mainly concerned with issues like access rights and regulatory requirements for handling daily data. The policy may simply state that for instance, only those who are required to work on the organization’s financial data should access such data which is common in organizations that are covered by the SOX or the PCI-DSS regulations.
• Healthcare Providers: In many healthcare organizations, the privacy of the patient is of utmost concern. In this case, a data governance policy would be most focused on the HIPAA laws are designed to protect patient information and save this information encrypted only for the qualified staff.
• E-commerce Companies: Regarding data governance in online retailers, policies may be up and running primarily on preserving customer data and meeting the requirements of various legal provisions, e.g. GDPR or CCPA. This could range from requirements for obtaining customer consent, procedures for protecting such information as customers’ payment details, or informing customers about how their data is processed.

How to Create an Effective Data Governance Policy

The data governance policy must be implemented systematically to ensure that it is implemented well enough to address the responsibility and efficiency in processing data. Therefore, to create a realistic policy, it is advised to arrange interventional meetings with the key stakeholders of the company including management, IT, and data owners. Consequently, assign distinct roles and responsibilities for data management, including data owners, stewards, and data custodians, and define policies of data management throughout the data’s life cycle from collection to deletion. It is for this reason that this structure not only protects the quality as well as privacy of data but also complies with the legal and regulatory standards of the organization.

A unique data governance structure and committee are mandatory to monitor and drive implementation to compliance. Designate access points to point out which individuals could have an interaction with which information and imply a strict data protection strategy to avoid that type of event. Iteration and updating of the policy is therefore important and requires to be periodically reviewed, trained, and monitored. Last on the list is to ensure that when developing your policy, it needs to be available to all your team members and also backed up with tools that help in the implementation of your Governance policy. When implemented these are practices which when instilled in the organization create a data governance policy that is flexible enough to change as business progresses but does not compromise on the quality of the data.

Who Should Be Involved in the Data Governance Policy Process?

Data governance is not solely the duty of the IT department. This is a corporate-wide approach that touches every aspect of the organization making it across the corporate spectrum. Therefore, to whom does this process of producing systematic knowledge belong?