Systems Analyst: What is data governance and how to implement it?

Data governance — framework for managing data availability, quality, and security.

Components:

• Data ownership: Who is responsible for each data domain.
• Data stewardship: Day-to-day quality management.
• Policies: Access control, quality standards, retention.
• Standards: Naming, formatting, documentation.

Organization:

• Data governance council: Strategic decisions.
• Data stewards: Domain-level management.
• Data owners: Business accountability.

Implementation steps:

1. Assess current state (inventory, quality, access).
2. Define governance framework and policies.
3. Establish roles and responsibilities.
4. Implement tooling (catalog, lineage, quality).
5. Monitor and iterate.

Key areas:

• Access governance: Who can access what.
• Quality governance: Data quality metrics and remediation.
• Privacy governance: PII detection, consent management.
• Metadata governance: Documentation and cataloging.

Tools:

• Collibra, Alation, Apache Atlas.