Data Governance 101 — (part 5) lightweight Policy writing

Thanks for coming back!

We have reviewed in part 1 of this series, why do we need Data Governance and in my part 2, how to start cataloging the data within the enterprise, how to document the supply chain of data in part 3. We have covered an introduction to Data Quality in part 4. We are going to introduce data governance policy writing now.

This is probably the most boring part for technologists and the value is misrepresented by data governance specialists to their own business. Several funding issues start here…and end here :(

What is policy writing anyway? To start off, think of this as writing business requirements (or features/epics/stories) for Data Governance. This is generally a 2-part exercise:

1. Policies (Features)
2. Procedures (Epics or Stories)

let’s leave the SDLC comparison here, this could be a slippery slope.

Data Governance Policies should reflect the organizational vision for ‘data as an asset’ and every organization I have come across (large and small) has a different view on it.

For example, Policies could be categorized as sensitive data access and handling policies, usage policies, categorization, and organizational ownership policies, etc., (I will list out few critical ones towards the end of this article).

For a given policy (e.g., sensitive data handling) you would describe in detail the…