Chapter 4 - Data Governance for Master Data Management

Abstract

Master data management (MDM) is an enterprise initiative, and that means an enterprise data governance program must be in place to oversee it. Governance is a critical issue for deploying MDM. The objective of data governance is predicated on the desire to assess and manage many kinds of risks that lurk within the enterprise information portfolio and to reduce the impacts incurred by the absence of oversight. Although many data governance activities might be triggered by a concern about regulatory compliance, the controls introduced by data governance processes and protocols provide a means for quantitative metrics for assessing risk reduction as well as measuring business performance improvements. By introducing a program for defining information policies that relate to the constraints of the business and adding in management and technical oversight, the organization can realign itself around performance measures that include adherence to business policies and the information policies that support the business. This chapter discusses how business policies are composed of information directives and how data rules contribute to conformance to those information directives. It examines what data governance is while introducing data stewardship roles and responsibilities and proposes a collaborative enterprise data governance framework for data sharing. The three important aspects of data governance for MDM are managing key data entities and critical data elements, ensuring the observance of information policies, and documenting and ensuring accountability for maintaining high-quality master data.