Key takeaways:
- Renee Langeness at Principal Financial Group, Scott Zinn at American Express, and Lisa Novier at Envestnet shared examples of the scopes of data governance councils, including creating accountability of data management for senior leaders, communicating feedback for informed decision making, and enforcing data governance policies enterprise-wide.
- Having the right people sit on your data governance council, including senior leadership members, is critical. Enterprise Data Strategy Board members shared how you can train key roles in your organization on the best practices for data governance councils and ensure their responsibilities are clear.
- You can track the effectiveness of your councils by measuring the percentage of domains with key roles onboarded, data elements with data quality rules, and elements with registered metadata.
A successful data governance council can lead to long-term success in providing quality enterprise data and enabling data driven strategic decisions.
In a recent Enterprise Data Strategy Board panel discussion, members gave insights on standardizing councils to help with decision-making and delivering trusted data at large organizations.
Renee Langeness, Director of Data Governance at Principal Financial Group, Scott Zinn, Vice President of Enterprise Data Governance at American Express, and Lisa Novier, Head of Governance, Risk, and Compliance for Data Analytics at Envestnet, discussed the scopes of data governance councils, how to identify your council members, and measuring your council’s effectiveness for long-term success.
1. Define the Purpose and Scope of a Governance Council
The first step in setting up your governance council will be defining its scope. Enterprise Data Strategy Board members shared how many councils oversee the effectiveness of their data reporting across the entire company and manage data security policies.
One example Renee shared was how the council members at Principal Financial Group work with data governance teams where they may not have authority, such as infrastructure decisions.
“That’s where I think it’s key that data governance is represented in some of those other decision-making bodies, whether it’s architecture decisions or data management practices,” Renee said.
She added that governance councils can also help manage the data practices in your organization.
In a private leadership discussion, Enterprise Data Board members shared other goals for data councils, including resolving data issues, better understanding the use of data across different lines of business, mitigating risk, ensuring privacy, and support for tooling choices.
It also helps to define if your governance team is acting as a business enabler, helping to achieve compliance goals, or reducing overall data risks.
“I think it’s key that data governance is represented in some of those other decision-making bodies, whether it’s architecture decisions or data management practices.”
Renee Langeness, Director of Data Governance at Principal Financial Group
Escalating Data Management Best Practice to Senior Leaders
Scott explained how the American Express data council comprises two teams with specific responsibilities.
His first team is focused on escalating best practices and accountability for data management to senior leaders. The data stewards on this team relay updates and feedback on their program to senior leaders to keep them informed.
“That’s all about moving the needle, putting more data under governance, managing more data, making decisions about what we prioritize from a domain perspective, and sequencing the work,” Scott added. “There’s a lot of data. We have to start somewhere and be smart about it.”
Supporting Executives on Strategic Decisions
The second team Scott mentioned in their council supports strategic decisions. He noted driving awareness for the data governance program and data literacy are some of the priorities of this team. Scott said informing executives on these topics is fundamental to efficiently scale data management.
“There’s a huge motivating factor behind our committee to get accountability and sponsorship in the movement of data management at scale,” Scott said. “Then they can start to introduce more strategic themes that help us make more efficient data related decisions.”
He shared another example of how the governance council provides support for implementing any data related tools or vendors at the company.
“There’s a huge motivating factor behind our committee to get accountability and sponsorship in the movement of data management at scale.”
Scott Zinn, Vice President of Enterprise Data Governance at American Express
“We’re a large company and a lot of folks look at tools for different reasons,” Scott said. “If we’re looking at tooling, if we’re looking at solving data related challenges, it helps to stand up a process where they can come to us in the data office and we can help broker what’s going on more broadly across the enterprise.”
Lisa echoed this sentiment and shared more on how councils can support overall enterprise goals, approve recommendations, and collaborate with governance teams to develop informed decisions based on data.
“For the data governance council, I think it’s at a different level,” Lisa said. “It’s more strategic. The data governance council should be clear on the priorities, and the council should be at the strategic level where it’s looking at the business strategy.”
“The data governance council should be clear on the priorities, and the council should be at the strategic level where it’s looking at the business strategy.”
Lisa Novier, Head of Governance, Risk, and Compliance for Data Analytics at Envestnet
2. Identify Data Governance Council Members
Enterprise Data Strategy Board members shared insights on how you can identify the best members in your organization to sit on your council. In a private leadership discussion, one member shared three steps on how they worked with leadership teams to pick council members and objectives.
- Put a good training program together on what it means to be a good data steward.
- Create a RACI chart so everyone knows their organizational roles and responsibilities.
- Pilot it with someone to identify any broken areas and pressure test it.
But during the panel discussion, Lisa noted that no specific role or skill set is needed to be on a governance council.
“I’ve had different experiences where it’s the data leaders across a large organization, because there are several, or it could be the business leaders that depend on the data governance program to provide those outcomes for them,” Lisa said.
She noted how it also depends on the company culture and how mature your organization is in understanding the importance of data governance overall.
Scott shared who sits on the governance council at American Express.
“It is a membership that represents the most senior levels of every unit across the company,” Scott said. “It also includes our chief privacy officer because of the privacy linkages to data. It also has our information security group.”
3. Measure Your Data Governance Council’s Performance
Enterprise Data Strategy Board members discussed how demonstrating the ROI of data councils is a tough challenge, especially when presenting concrete numbers.
Members suggested measuring the percentage of domains with key roles onboarded, the percentage of data elements with data quality rules, the percentage of elements with registered metadata, and the number of curated data products.
But for less mature programs, these historical data points may not be available. One data leader shared another option when specific metrics are needed: using data related to your councils showing the progress of your overall data governance program. They noted how you could track the percentage of data domains in which the data is governed as outlined in your logic models.
Learn More About How You Can Build a Successful Data Governance Council
Scott, Lisa, and Renee shared more about how you can build data governance councils for long-term success in large organizations during the Enterprise Data Strategy Board panel discussion.
They went in-depth on elevating data governance in large enterprises and shared more insights on scaling data governance councils to support strategic decisions.
If you lead data management, analytics, and governance at a large enterprise, you can gain more unbiased peer insights by joining the community.
