Does Data Governance Equal Data Quality?

By Frank Dravis, Senior Consultant

I was working with a client collecting stakeholder inputs in preparation for a proposed data governance program. One of the questions I asked the interviewees was “How do you expect data governance to help you?” The responses varied by the person’s role in the organization, but universally, all of the managers, be they in field marketing, global marketing, sales ops, or other areas answered the question in roughly the same way: they expected data governance to improve data quality.

Yes, data governance will indeed improve data quality over time through the implementation of policies and better processes, but the respondents expected data governance to directly affect data cleansing operations.

Suffice it to say there is a whole chain of activities that need to take place between the formation of a data governance program and the point where a data analyst connects a data quality solution to the data and begins the standardizing and de-duping. However, it was encouraging for me to see the value proposition of the two concepts, governance and quality, inextricably intertwined, no attempts to separate or isolate them. Our client’s business people fervently believed that taken together data governance and data quality were the solution to the myriad of problems exacerbated by silo-ed, fractured, and unreliable data.

My guess is that this client’s adoption curve for data governance will be shorter and can piggy-back off the successes of data quality. I’ll let you know if I’m right.

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Frank Dravis is a senior consultant with 21 years of experience in enterprise information management (EIM) and data quality solutions design, implementation, and consulting. He specializes in data integration, data quality, and data governance solutions, advising key clients and industry vendors.

Comments

[Steve Tuck]

Hi Frank,

It's great to reconnect with you; nice post!

Data Quality and Data Governance - a match made in heaven. They go together like a love and marriage (but they didn't rhyme so Frank went with horse & carriage).

[Daragh O Brien, Director Publicity IAIDQ]

I concur with Steve. This is a great post. My personal view is that Data Governance can help put focus on some of the 'softer' issues in information quality.. the tricky ones that Larry English neatly encapsulates in "Process 6" of his TIQM methodology, and which Tom Redman describes as "the brutal politics of data and information".

[Dylan Jones]

Great post Frank, I think the boundary between the two disciplines is often a poorly understood area so it would be great to see some more examples.

I think you hit the nail on the head with the word "silo", without governance we can all too often end up with lots of siloed DQ efforts all doing great work but not necessarily with a strategic focus.

A number of our readers are seeing a lot of value in leveraging existing DQ infrastructure before launching DG so I think it is an essential marriage.

[Doug]

Frank,

Interesting note. Policy is not result, right? Policy, or in this case, governance, is simply a framework and/or strategy. Data Quality becomes the tactical and requires an iterative approach to evolve and complete the improvement of the data.

Still enjoying seeing your posts Frank - stay well!