The data governance office or team are the leaders in dealing with data within an organization. This team is comprised of several members such as

• Chief Data Officer
•  Data Governance Lead
•  Data Governance Consultant
•  Data Quality Analyst

We will look at each of these below. It also needs to be mentioned that a person might be assigned several of these roles which are particularly true in a smaller organization. In addition, it is possible that several people might fulfill one of these roles in a much larger organization as well.

Chief Data Officer

The chief data officer is responsible for shaping the overall data strategy at an organization. The chief data officer also promotes a data-driven culture and pushes for change within the organization. A person in this position also needs to understand the data needs of the organization in order to further the vision of the institution or company.

The role of the chief data officer encompasses all of the other roles that will be discussed. The chief data officer is essentially the leader of the data team and provides help with governance consulting, quality, and analytics. However, the primary role of this position is to see the big picture for big data and to guide the organization in this regard, which implies that technical skills are beneficial but leadership and change promotion is more critical. In sum, this is a challenging position that requires a large amount of experience

Data Governance Lead

The data governance leads primary responsibilities to involve defining policies and data governance frameworks. While the chief data officer is more of an evangelist or promoter of data governance the data governance lead is focused on the actual implementation of change and guiding the organization in this process.

Essentially, the data governance lead is in charge of the day-to-day operation of the data governance team. While the chief data officer may be the dreamer the data governance lead is a steady hand behind the push for change.

Data Governance Consultant

The data governance consultant is the subject matter expert in data governance. Their role is to know all the details of data governance in the general field and even better if they know how to make data governance happen in a particular discipline. For example, a data governance consultant who knows how to make data governance happen within the context of a university in particular.

The data governance consultant supports the data governance lead with implementation. In addition, the consultant is a go-between for the larger organization and IT. Serving as a go-between implies that the consultant is able to effectively communicate with both parties on a technical level with IT and in a layman’s matter with the larger organization. The synergy between IT and the larger organization can be challenging because of communications issues due to vastly different backgrounds and it is the consultant’s responsibility to bridge this gap.

Data Quality Analyst

The data quality analyst’s job is as the name implies to ensure quality data. One way of determining data quality is to develop rules for data entry. For example, a rule for data quality is that marital status can only be single, married, divorced, or widowed. This rule restricts any other option that people may want. When this rule is supported it is an example of high quilty within this context.

A data quality analyst also performs troubleshooting or root cause investigations. If something funny is going on in the data such as duplicates, it is the data quality analyst’s job to determine what is causing the problems and to find a solution. Lastly, a data quality analyst is also responsible for statistical work. This can include statistical work that is associated with the work of a data analyst and or statistical work that monitors the use of data and the quality of data within the organization.

Conclusion

The data governance team plays a critical role in supporting the organization with reliable and clean data that can be trusted to make actionable insights. Even though this is a tremendous challenge it is an important function in an organization.