CSU Data Governance Plan

Data governance is the orchestration of people, process and technology to enable an organization to leverage information as an enterprise asset. Data governance manages, safeguards, improves and protects organizational information. Effective data governance can enhance the quality, availability and integrity of your data by enabling cross-organizational collaboration and structured policy-making (IBM, 2007).

The purpose of the Data Governance Committee is to address the following issues related to data and information management across CSU campus.

• Data Quality: Accuracy of data in institutional databases and official census records
• Data Integrity: Processes and procedures to ensure the quality, validity and trustworthiness of institutional data.
• Data Integration: Ability to connect and interrelate data from different and independent databases.
• Data Monitoring: Periodic systematic data scanning and metadata checking that ensures the continuing quality, integrity and integration of data over time.

Levels of Data Governance Responsibility

The levels of responsibility for data management that are expected at CSU to ensure proper handling of institutional data are outlined in the BOR USG Business Procedures Manual 12.0.

Those roles were modified and expanded to include a metadata focus, governance council, and data integrity task forces and are operationally defined at CSU as follows:

Data owner

CSU is the data owner of all institutional data and databases. Individuals, academic and administrative units may have responsibilities for overseeing and managing subsets of CSU's data or databases, but no single person, academic or administrative unit within the institution "owns" that institutional data or the associated database. The President is ultimately accountable for ensuring that the institutional interests in CSU's data are managed appropriately.

Data Governance Council

The Data Governance Council's purpose is to protect the Data Owner's (CSU's) interests and ensure campus-wide data quality, data integrity, and data integration through ongoing data monitoring. The CIO serves as the chairman of CSU's Data Governance Council representing the interests of the President and the institution. The Chief Data Officer serves as the assistant chair of the Data Governance Council and coordinates the agenda and related functions of CSU's Data and Metadata Governance Structure, including the formation and facilitation of Data Integrity Audit Teams (DIAT). Data Trustees serve as members of CSU's Data Governance Council.

Key Responsibilities of the Data Governance Council include:

• Establishing and monitoring institutional data governance policies and procedures for CSU's data and metadata management that protect the Data Owner's interests and ensure data quality, data integrity, and data integration.
• Reviewing and approving the integration of operational databases into CSU's Oracle Business Intelligence system, mappings and metadata structures and clarifying the identities of the data trustee, data stewards, and data managers associated with those operational databases, including the expansion of Council membership as needed.
• Reviewing and approving the implementation, creation, modification or deletion of key data elements and their coding structures that have significant impact on other data trustees, stewards, managers or users as well as on enterprise operations, including data integration, reporting, and analytics for decision-support.
• Arbitrating issues of conflicting data management practices and procedures across and within CSU's databases and across data governance levels of responsibility and organizational divisions.
• Verifying that policies and procedures established to ensure data quality, integrity and integration are implemented continuously and result in the expected level of data quality over time.

Membership:

In the Data Governance structure at CSU, these individuals are:

Chief Data Officer

As required by the USG Board of Regents, the CSU President has appointed the Director of Institutional Research to serve as the institution's Chief Data Officer.

Data Trustees

Data Trustees are defined as institutional officers, (i.e. Vice Presidents, Vice Provosts, Deans, etc.) and have authority over policies and procedures regarding business definitions of data, and access and usage of data, within their delegations of authority. Each Data Trustee appoints Data Stewards and Data Managers.

Key Responsibilities of Data Trustees include:

• Overseeing and continuously improving business practices in their areas of responsibility to ensure the quality, integrity and integration of the data systems and subsets for which they are responsible in accordance with CSU, USG, and federal policies and procedures and CSU's metadata standards.
• Ensuring that changes in business practices that result in significant changes to CSU's metadata repository are reviewed and endorsed by the Data Governance Council before being implemented.
• Participate in monthly data meeting (organized by Chief Data Officer or Dir of IR)

Metadata Stewards

These are individuals at CSU with institution-wide data and information management responsibilities that entail internal and external reporting, census data collections, integrated data warehousing and enterprise intelligence facilitation. These enterprise information management functions include stewardship responsibilities for CSU's metadata. Metadata is broadly defined as "data about data" stored in a metadata repository. A metadata repository includes more than a typical data element dictionary. A comprehensive metadata repository standardizes and stores information about data in terms of their data sources, content, codes, business rules, interrelationships, history etc. in a centralized and widely accessible repository that is usable by information technology specialists as well as non-technical end users.

Key Responsibilities include:

• Mapping of data elements across databases to establish fully integrated enterprise intelligence and data warehousing capabilities.
• Developing, maintaining and expanding CSU's metadata repository which contains institution's standards for governing data quality, integrity and data integration.
• Establishing and overseeing business practices to ensure the quality, integrity and integration of the institution's official census data and data warehouse.
• Investigating institutionally pervasive data quality issues.
• Communicating changes in the metadata repository to the data trustees, stewards, managers and users.
• Implementing electronic data monitoring and metadata error detection strategies to proactively identify and verify data quality, integrity and integration over time.
• Participate in monthly data meeting (organized by Chief Data Officer or Dir of IR)

Membership:

Metadata Steward Titles

Director of Continuous Improvement & Projects
Director of Institutional Research
Director of Enterprise Application Services
Registrar

Data Stewards

These key support personnel have high-level responsibilities for managing one or more major subsets of data, typically under the oversight of a Data Trustee. They may supervise or also serve as data managers in the day-to-day capture and maintenance of specific sub-sets of data in related transactional databases. The Stewards ensure that data quality and integrity are preserved in accordance with established governance policies and practices on behalf of the best interests of the institution.

Key Responsibilities of Data Stewards include:

• Establishing, overseeing and continuously improving business practices in their areas of
• responsibility to ensure the quality, integrity and integration of the data systems and subsets for which they are responsible under the supervision of the data trustee and in accordance with CSU, USG, and federal policies and procedures and CSU's metadata standards.
• Ensuring that changes in business practices that result in significant changes to CSU's metadata repository are communicated to the data trustee and reviewed and endorsed by the Data Governance Council before being implemented.
• Proactively identifying, analyzing and resolving data quality, integrity and integration problems involving their areas that cross multiple units or divisions.
• Recommending new or modified business practices within their areas that advance data quality, integrity and integration of institutional data elements.
• Collaborating with the Director of Continuous Improvement & Projects who is the data trustee for the metadata repository to document data definitions, business practices and metadata details about data for which they are responsible so that all users are aware of the definitions, restrictions, interpretations or other issues in place to ensure the correct use of the data.

Data Integrity Audit Teams (DIAT)

These are typically ad hoc task forces established and facilitated by the Director of Continuous Improvement & Projects at the request of the CIO, a Data Trustee, a Metadata Steward, or a Data Steward to diagnose and devise proposed solutions for data integrity problems and issues. Conclusions and recommendations of these DIAT task forces will be shared with Data Stewards and be reviewed and approved by the Data Trustees Governance Council.

Data Managers

These are support staff designated by the Data Stewards who have responsibility for
managing and documenting the administrative processes, day-to-day capture, maintenance, and integrity of specific sub-sets of data or data elements. Their work in that capacity is subject to CSU's data governance policies and procedures and metadata standards.

Key Responsibilities of the Data Managers include:

• Implementing business practices in their areas of responsibility to ensure the quality, integrity and integration of the data systems and subsets for which they are responsible under the supervision of the data steward and in accordance with CSU, USG, and federal policies and procedures and CSU's metadata standards.
• Ensuring that changes in business practices that result in significant changes to CSU's metadata repository are communicated to the data steward.
• Proactively identifying data quality, integrity and integration problems involving their areas that cross multiple units or divisions and working with the data steward to address those issues.
• Recommending new or modified business practices to their data steward that advance data quality, integrity and integration of institutional data elements.

Data User

CSU employees who use or combine data elements in the course of their job responsibilities, and/or external constituents who consume informational or data reports produced using CSU institutional data and Oracle Business Intelligence tools. In some instances, data trustees, stewards and managers are also data users. In other instances, CSU personnel who do not have data management responsibilities are also data users. CSU's BI core team members typically serve multiple roles in the data governance structure as data trustees, stewards, managers as well as data users.

References

1) IBM Master Data Management: Effective Data Governance. November 2007. Retrieved from ftp://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/uk/itsolutions/information-management/information-transformation/master-data-management/master-data-management-governance.pdf

2) Master Data Governance: Model and Mechanism. PricewaterhouseCoopers. 2011.
Retrieved from http://www.pwc.com/en_US/us/increasing-it-effectiveness/assets/model-and-mechanism-2011.pdf (PDF)

3) Quality Data Matters at KSU! Data & Metadata Governance Structure at KSU. Retrieved from 6/21/2012 - http://ir.kennesaw.edu/EIMWebApps/vic/data_governance/documents/KSU_Data_Governance_Structure_June_2010_MLF.pdf

4) Data Management Committee. University of Washington. Retrieved from https://www.washington.edu/data-governance/