Data governance. What is it? Why is it important? What is the relationship between governance and stewardship? Does enterprise data management include data governance? Do you know what costs your organization incurs by having duplicate data or by not having standard definitions of common data? Can you identify the essential data your organization needs for maintaining or increasing its competitive momentum?

If you can’t answer these questions correctly, you may be searching for a way to address the need to understand and use your data more effectively and provide greater accountability for the capture, storage and usage of data. Data governance is a program that helps you discover the power of leveraging your data assets and gives your organization a clear picture of its performance. In essence, data governance helps control the valuable assets of data and information.

Data governance plays a fundamental role in any enterprise data management framework. An enterprise data management program is designed to manage information as an asset. Most enterprises carefully manage other assets (financial, physical, and human) but often overlook the immense value inherent in their data. Typically, if an organization is aware of the data it captures, stores and uses, it is only aware of the deficiencies of that data – not the ways that data can be transformed into valuable information. Instituting a data governance program helps with this transformation by providing a central focus for identifying and controlling the collection, storage and disposition of information resources.