ACE Meeting 20200722: Data Governance

Success Stories and Lessons Learned

Case Studies and Q&A
Data Governance Definition(s)

From Federal Data Strategy Data Governance Playbook (

https://resources.data.gov/assets/documents/fds-data-governance-playbook.pdf):
Data governance is the process of setting and enforcing priorities for managing and
using data as a strategic asset. 

From CIO (
https://www.cio.com/article/3521011/what-is-data-governance-a-best-practices-framewo
rk-for-managing-data-assets.html
):
Data governance defines roles, responsibilities, and processes for ensuring
accountability for and ownership of data assets across the enterprise.

From Tammy:
Data governance is the management of data throughout its lifecycle.

All of these mean the same thing – you set up a “governance body” to ensure some
basic principles are met when it comes to data.
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Data Governance Body – A LONG TERM ITERATIVE PROJECT

So who is this governance body who will manage the data, sets the priorities, ensures
ownership of data across the enterprise. This group is called the Enterprise Data
Governance Council. OK has one and it looks like below:

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Data Governance Roles

What’s a data steward? What do they do?

Although definitions vary, data stewards are subject matter experts (SMEs) who
understand and communicate the meaning and use of information. They facilitate the
connection between the business owners of the data and the technology users of the
data.

That means:
Working cross-functionally across lines of business to ensure their domain's data is
managed and understood
Ensuring the accuracy of information across the enterprise
Directing data quality activities
Reviewing and approving master data management approaches, outcomes, and
activities
Working with other data owners to resolve data issues

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Data Governance Principles (VARMINT)

Principles of Data Governance (VARMINT):

1) Valuing data – data has to be managed as an asset
2) Accountability – who’s responsible for the data? Who do you ask?
3) Rules: A data governance process should follow standardized rules and regulations
to avoid risks and noncompliance. Data access, data definition, privacy policies and
security standards should be documented.
4) Managing quality and change: The quality of data has to be managed consistently
from the very beginning. The enterprise data must be tested on a periodic basis
against the defined quality standards.
5) Integrity (both human and data integrity)
6) Normalization: ensure same data across the organization; single source of truth.
7) Testability: A data audit is a standard process in organizations. Therefore, the
documented methodology should match the process, to pass an audit test.

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VARMINT Principles in Action -- COVID project:
rules, managing quality and change, normalization and integrity

IL hospital data feed, Mar 2020: Manual process and room for error

Processes left room for variability

Previous state: manual process and error

Data manually Data stored in flat Files distributed  Required manual intervention across
pulled from external files manually, multiple multiple steps of process
website sources of truth, no
 Lack of interactive visualizations to
updating without
repull better represent data
 Lack of centralized hub to store,
maintain, and transform data

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VARMINT Principles in Action -- COVID project:
Introducing rules, managing quality and change, normalization and integrity

Illinois hospital data feed: Built datahub and connections to generate automated visualizations

Current state: Automated process

Developed central Developed automated Transformed results from Visualizations generated

data depository Python script to push Python script and loaded from Tableau and ArcGIS,
(database) to hold files to database to SQL database pushed to website
data

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VARMINT Principles in Action -- COVID project

https://www.dph.illinois.gov/covid19/hospitalization-utilization

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VARMINT Principles in Action -- COVID project

https://www.dph.illinois.gov/covid19/hospitalization-utilization

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Questions? Stories? Use Cases of these principles?

User stories – Bring your own stories here