Governance Awareness

Governance awareness is where the governance requirements are attached to the descriptions of the data assets in the data catalog. This means that someone wishing to use a data asset can easily understand the governance requirements they must meet to use it responsibility.

Most organizations use governance classifications. These are labels that are attached to the asset descriptions, or the data elements descriptions where they exist.

The governance classifications each define a list of governance requirements for different situations. For example a governance classification could be “confidential”. The governance program would then describe the governance requirements for confidential data when, for example:

• it is shared with a colleague,
• passed to an external person,
• stored etc

The governance program educated employees on the use and meaning of the governance classifications so they know how to manage any data with that classification.

Classifications can be added directly to an asset’s metadata description, or the descriptions of the data elements within the asset, or indirectly to the glossary terms that are linked to the asset/data element descriptions.

Figure 1 shows both options for adding classifications to the catalog. Classifying through the glossary terms creates greater consistency in the way that data is classified, but it does requirement that the attachment of glossary terms to the descriptions of assets/data elements is comprehensive.

Figure 1: Capabilities needed to achieve Governance Awareness

The next phase is Embedded Governance.

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License: CC BY 4.0, Copyright Contributors to the ODPi Egeria project.