Improving Your Data Governance Posture

Data governance doesn’t have a magic bullet or even a well-defined goal or end date. It’s a never-ending, ongoing process of trial, error and optimization as your business, your data and your data users change. If you’re like most practitioners responsible for governing and securing data, you’re always looking for better ways to overcome data governance challenges or ensure your systems are compliant.

As part of our Expert Panel Series, we asked experts in the modern data ecosystem what advice they’d give to companies looking to improve their data governance posture (which should be all of them). Here’s what we heard….

Ethan Pack - VP Enterprise Architecture, TDECU

"A company's data governance posture really starts with inspecting the organization's culture and identifying how data is important to the firm's short- and long-term objectives. Companies need to be honest in assessing their data literacy, talent, and data-related needs, pain points, and opportunities. These inputs are vital to establishing or updating a data governance framework that aligns to its desired posture and outcomes.

Then, it's about reinforcing the overall message of the operational and strategic value of data, addressing talent needs, and providing ongoing examples of how data governance is enabling both quick wins and more time-intensive efforts for data-led value creation and realization.

Ongoing monitoring and auditing is a must, and I'm excited to continue partnering with ALTR to help us transform static data governance policies into active, observable, and kinetic aspects of our business."

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Pat Dionne - Data Entrepreneur, CEO of Passerelle

“Ethan Pack’s comment about how ALTR helps 'transform static data governance policies into active, observable, and kinetic aspects of our business' is right on.

Additionally, identify all data sources, classify data based on sensitivity and importance, and define a glossary of terms and ownership. To promote sustainability & efficiency, organizations should look at automating aspects of data governance wherever possible.”

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James Beecham - Founder & CEO of ALTR, Member Forbes Technology Council

“Ensure the entire business is on board. At the Gartner Data & Analytics conference earlier this year, I heard someone from a very large company say 'Data governance has become a third rail because not everyone at the table cares' and then continued on to declare why she thoughts other stakeholders didn’t care. It all came back to leadership. Ensure your leadership is empowering and communicating the needs of the business to everyone at the same time, in the same room.”