Data Governance
What Is Data Governance?
Data governance is everything you do to ensure data is secure, private, accurate, available and usable. It contributes to:
- better, timely decisions
- control over costs
- enhanced compliance
- greater trust from stakeholders and those involved in projects
- better risk management
- better access to data.
Data governance interacts and influences many areas of data management, such as:
- data quality
- data retention and storage
- findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR) data, which involves metadata, vocabularies and identifiers
- the CARE principles for Indigenous data sovereignty and governance
- the TRUST principles for constructing data repositories
- data access and sharing.
Basic Principles of Data Governance
When thinking about data governance, consider:
- existing governance practice
- roles and responsibilities
- data access
- the sensitivity of the data
- data ownership and location
- the storage and type of the data
- potential reuse of the data
- any risks.
Good data governance will require the right people to follow the right processes with the support of the right technology[1] throughout the data life cycle.
Data Governance Resources by the ARDC
Use these resources by the ARDC to make sure your data is well governed:
Related ARDC Resources
We also have resources on topics related to data governance:
Further Support
For further support or to ask any questions related to data governance, please contact us.
There are many other organisations and web resources that can help you understand the requirements of data governance, including the:
- NSW Government Data Governance Toolkit
- Office of the National Data Commissioner (ONDC)
- Indigenous Data Network
- Australian Digital Observatory (ADO)’s guide to data governance for human-related dynamic digital data
- Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW)’s Data Governance Framework
- University of Technology Sydney (UTS)’s Data Governance Policy.
If you work at a university, you may also find materials related to data governance at your research office.
Reference
- Data.NSW. (2021). “Module 3: Data Governance Model.” Data Governance Toolkit. https://data.nsw.gov.au/data-governance-toolkit-0/module-3-data-governance. Jump back
