Why is it So Hard to Write a Data Governance Policy?

Today's question is one that I have been asked many times over the years, and in particular more recently since my blog post on whether you need a Data Governance policy. You may remember in that piece I told you that you absolutely do need a Data Governance policy. Which, naturally begs the question "Why is it so hard to write a data governance policy?"

I think the main reason for this is that there are very few people out there that have ever written a Data Governance policy. And, if it is the first time you have ever written a Data Governance policy, that chances are, you just do not know where to start.

I've seen many examples where people have spent a lot of time and effort researching Data Governance, what they think they ought to have in their framework and dumping everything they found in their Data Governance policy. This ends up giving you a policy that is really long - some I've seen are like small novels! And, to be fair, I may have written some that length in the early days too.

But when you come to share them with any stakeholders, particularly senior ones, they're going to be almost completely put off by the sheer level of detail. Of course, there is always a temptation to try and put too much into policies, but that scares people off, and you won't get your senior stakeholders signing it off. You may even impact the success of your Data Governance initiative at that point.

The other thing that I frequently see is people thinking that they can fast track this part of a Data Governance initiative by copying somebody else's policy. So, they look on Google or they ask a friend who's doing a similar job at another organisation if they can have a copy of their policy.

I would really warn you against this because a policy should be written to reflect how your organisation wants to do Data Governance. Picking up somebody else's and just adapting and amending a few bits means that you actually haven't got a policy that was written for your organisation. Therefore, it's extremely unlikely to be useful or relevant to your organisation. And again, more likely to put more people's backs up and damage your Data Governance initiative.

In fact, sometimes I find myself writing a policy for my clients and they often assume that I will just take a previous policy I've written and tweak it for them. However, this really wouldn't be very helpful for the new client, as it wouldn't be designed to meet their needs!

And, as with all things data governance, I don't think that there is such a thing as a standard approach - there certainly is not one for a data governance policy. Think about it this way… if there is no such thing as a standard data governance framework, why would you think that a policy written for another organisation would work for you?

Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t realise this, and I’m often asked if I would share a template or an example for data governance policy that they can copy

For a policy to be really useful (i.e. help you implement Data Governance successfully), it needs to be written with your organisation in mind. You should consider the following:

• What is the scope of your data governance programme?

• What is it that your organisation is going to do to manage its data better?

• What roles and responsibilities are you going to have to manage your data better? 

• What kind of processes are you going to implement as a result of having data governance?

Now, the answers to these questions will not be the same for all companies and I can honestly say that every organisation I have ever worked with has been unique in its approach to data governance.

I admit sometimes the differences are subtle, but for a policy to be valuable, these subtleties really do need to be addressed. So, what's the answer? As I said, this is a question I've been asked so many times over the years, and I have been asked many times to write Data Governance policies for people, so I decided that this was something I really needed to help people with. So, I'm really pleased to announce that my latest course is ‘How to Write a Good Data Governance Policy’.

Or you’d like to know more about how I can help you and your organisation then please book a call using the button below.