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Data Governance within the COS organization structure

Data will be categorized as part of certain data domains based on type and origin in order to establish ownership within the organization. These domains are as follows:

Governance Roles and responsibilities

Executive Sponsor

The executive sponsor is a senior employee who is charged with coordinating data governance activities and programs. The role of the executive sponsor is to serve as the conduit between the most senior stakeholders and the data governance lead or council and is authorized to make decisions and take actions.

The responsibilities of the executive sponsor can vary depending on the organizational culture and it depends if they take on a more passive role or a more active role.

It is also within their remit to secure funding for the program and ensure team members are given suitable time away from the daily duties in order to fulfil their roles within the data governance team. This means the executive sponsor need to be of relative seniority within your organization.

If they take a more passive role, their responsibilities generally only include securing funding and ensuring that the data governance’s deliverables are tied to the business priorities.

(President or VP of Operations)

Data Governance Lead

The data governance lead is responsible for all aspects of defining and operating the data governance policies and supporting the multiple data domains. They are ultimately responsible for implementing the data governance program vision, promoting the role of governance and enforcing policy, while following data governance best practices.

Traditionally, this role sat under IT and tended to be the responsibility of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) or even the Chief Technology Officer (CTO). There are still quite a few organizations where this is still occurring, but it’s no longer recommended.

Depending on the size of your organization, its culture, needs, goals, as well as the operating model, the role could also fall of data governance lead could onto the following people:

• Data governance director/ manager

• Chief Data Officer

• Information security and compliance lead

Whomever the role is given to, its main responsibility is to provide leadership, support, sponsorship, and understanding of data governance to other departments.

(Dean of Technology or Dean of Research)

Data Owners

Data Owners are people within the organization that have decision making authority about business processes, definitions, data quality, data accessibility, and data retention requirements within their data domain. Data owners need to know or be aware of the regulations, policies, and laws governing data privacy. They also need to know the business needs, rules, procedures, and constraints associated with their data domain.

Ideally, a data owner should have in-depth knowledge and a sound business understanding of the data within their domain. Nobody at the institution will know everything about every business practice in every data domain which is why we need owners of the data within each data domain to be part of the data governance process.

Data owners are usually senior managers from different business functional areas. In turn, these business areas are the main stakeholders of specific data domains.

(VP’s and Managers of functional areas)

Data Stewards

Most data stewards come from their respective business departments. They would be responsible for specific data domains or areas within the district. Data stewards ensure data quality, define data standards, resolve data-related issues, and serve as subject matter experts for their respective domains.

Data Custodians

Technology Services staff responsible for storage and access to the data.

Data Stakeholders

Any users of the data.

Data Governance Council

(Domain representatives plus SIG (Research and Tech Services))

Data Governance Policy

Policy decisions or changes will go through the normal governance process for the institution.