Data Governance: Did We Make The Right Choices?

Coming back from the SAS Industry Analyst Event left me with one big question - Are we taking into account the recommendations or insights provided through analysis and see if they actually produced positive or negative results?

It's a big question for data governance that I'm not hearing discussed around the table.  We often emphsize how data is supplied, but how it performs in it's consumed state is fogotten.  

When leading business intelligence and analytics teams I always pushed to create reports and analysis that ultimately incented action.  What you know should influence behavior and decisions, even if the influence was to say, "Don't change, keep up the good work!"  This should be a fundamental function of data govenance.  We need to care not only that the data is in the right form factor but also review what the data tells us/or how we interpret the data and did it make us better?

I've talked about the closed-loop from a master data management perspective - what you learn about customers will alter and enrich the customer master.  The connection to data governance is pretty clear in this case.  However, we shouldn't stop at raw data and master definitions.  Our attention needs to include the data business users receive and if it is trusted and accurate.  This goes back to the fact that how the business defines data is more than what exists in a database or application.  Data is a total, a percentage, an index.  This derived data is what the business expects to govern - and if derived data isn't supporting business objectives, that has to be incorporated into the data governance discussion.

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