Operational Data Governance Structure

For a data governance program to succeed there is a requirement for an operating structure, where activities take place, how are decisions tracked, approved even challenged.

For the purposes of this short article we wont go into the details of establishing the structure practically, discussion for another thread. The simple theory of the structure and which activities sit within operating levels as an ideal scenario.

Conceptually the operating model can be broken down into 3 layers:

Level 1: Strategic Direction — Top level, Setting the strategic direction on how to maximize the value of data for the organization, including prioritization of data initiative projects where required

Level 2: Strategic Deployment — Middle level, Designing and implementing the data strategy, policies & principles to ensure effective data controls and oversight across the organization

Level 3: Operational Execution — Lowest level, Topic-oriented working groups to operationalize the data strategy, addressing their teams’ needs, coordinate directly with business users and implement approved changes

The data governance groups can then be pinned to each of the operating levels, the below visualization shows a structure based on a global organization, the strategic level playing the role of aligning the regions, however none global organizations still require the strategic level 2 to align domains functionally i.e. a supermarket could structure…