Data Governance

What is Data Governance?

Data Governance is the set of policies, processes, roles, and responsibilities that frame data management in an organization. It aims to ensure that data is reliable, secure, compliant, and usable by the right people.

What is the difference between Data Governance and Data Management?

Data Governance defines the rules and responsibilities (the framework); Data Management operationalizes them (the practice). Governance answers "who decides what and according to which rules"; management answers "how data is handled day-to-day." In practice, the two heavily overlap.

What is a Data Owner?

A Data Owner is the person or business entity responsible for a dataset or data domain. They decide on access, expected quality, and legitimate use. Not to be confused with the Data Steward, who is the operational guarantor of day-to-day data quality.

How does GDPR relate to Data Governance?

GDPR imposes legal obligations on personal data (legal basis, individual rights, DPO, transfers). Data Governance provides the organizational framework to meet these obligations at scale: data inventory, retention policies, access control, processing traceability.

What is federated governance?

Federated governance is a model where decisions are shared between a center (which sets common standards) and domains (which apply them autonomously). It is the governance model associated with Data Mesh and large decentralized organizations.