What is Your Role?
Below are a few examples of roles that you might see in an organization. This list is not representative of any particular organization; it is meant only to help you understand and align roles you have seen to responsibilities. Each of these roles could play a part in a data governance matrix. Note that these are not necessarily job titles. One individual’s job could encompass multiple roles.
What Some of These Roles Do
Data Governance Domains | Domain Decisions |
| Data Principles Clarifying the role of data as an asset | What are the business uses of internal data for the business? What data from external brokers can be potentially employed by the business? What additional business uses can be created by integrating internal data (within the organization) with external data (from the brokers)? How is the purpose and context of data available to the business evaluated both upstream (operational and transactional systems) and downstream (analytical systems)? What are the mechanisms for communicating business uses of internal/external data on an ongoing basis? When do you deliver it? How often? What are the desirable behaviors for employing internal/external data as assets? How will data be effectively used cross-functionally? How are opportunities for sharing and reuse of internal/external data identified? How does the regulatory environment influence the business uses of internal/external data?How will the use case for storing data “as is” or without immediate intended use — e.g., for data lakes — be made? How will ethical uses of data be defined? How will a culture of responsible use of data be created? |
| Data Quality Establishing the requirements of intended use of data | How is a compelling business case for initial and ongoing data quality made? Which information is critical to key business processes that impact essential outcomes? What are the standards for data quality with respect to accuracy, timeliness, completeness and credibility for different anticipated uses of data? What is the program for establishing and communicating data quality? How will data quality as well as the associated program be evaluated? What terms and concepts do the business users use frequently? What is the program for master data management (MDM)? What is the scope and role of metrics in MDM? |
| Metadata Establishing the semantics or “content” of data so that it is interpretable by the users | What is the program for consistently documenting the semantics of data — format of data, quality it represents and potential value for the business? How will data be consistently defined and modeled so that it is interpretable? What is the plan to keep different types of metadata up-to-date? What will be the metadata strategy for data lakes that focus on data interrogation and discovery? |
| Data Access Specifying access requirements of data | What is the business value of internal/external data? How will risk assessment be conducted on an ongoing basis? How will privacy-related risks be gauged? How will assessment results be integrated with the overall compliance monitoring efforts? What are data access standards and procedures? What is the program for periodic monitoring and audit for compliance? How is security awareness and education disseminated? What is the program for backup and recovery? |
| Data Lifecycle Determining the definition, production, retention and retirement of data | How is data inventoried? What is the program for data definition, production, retention, and retirement for different types of data? How are guidelines for categorizing data that take into account the sensitivity of the information as well as its criticality and value to the organization established? How do the compliance issues related to legislation affect data retention and archiving? |
Business requirements analyst
Investigates, understands, describes and documents business requirements. Identifies and describes broad scope requirements at high level. Examines and recommends alternative solutions.
Project manager
Responsible for success of business intelligence projects. Manages the process that produces the defined deliverables. Tracks metrics such as milestones, issues, architectural adherence, resource utilization, testing, documentation. Communicates progress.
Enterprise Information architect
Establishes a structure for business information. Aligns business priorities with analytic applications. Establishes a business case for customer relationship management or other analytics.
Database developer
Specifies, implements and optimizes databases.
Source data analyst
Investigates, understands, describes and documents data content of source systems. At program level, assesses source systems with respect to content, quality, timeliness, reliability and subject content. At project level, provides inputs for data capture, cleansing and transformation processes.
Metadata administrator
Implements and evolves the metadata strategy. Ensures that metadata is captured, recorded and kept up-to-date.
Trainer
Develops and presents training programs for the business users of analytic tools.
Database administrator
Manages the health, security and performance of data warehouse or business intelligence environment. Responsible for physical design, testing, implementation and performance tuning.