Data Governance

Data Governance is how an organisation decides and controls the way its data is managed. It is not a tool or a department: it is a system of accountabilities (who decides), rules (what quality, what access, how long data is kept) and processes (how problems are detected and fixed).

An analogy: if data were the water in a building, Data Governance would be deciding who looks after each pipe, what quality the water must have, who can open each tap and how leaks are reported.

Its usual building blocks are Data Owners and Data Stewards, a governance committee, a data catalogue, quality rules, lineage, access and classification policies, and maturity metrics. It is also the foundation for the AI Act: high-risk AI needs governed data to meet Article 10.