DEBATE: How should data governance and data quality work together?

I added a comment to a fun debate on the Data Quality Pro site. The question was around the interaction between Data Governance and Data Quality. Most people agreed they were connected, but I think some people are living in the details of Data Governance. It has so much more potential than just fixing data models. My thoughts…

DEBATE: How should data governance and data quality work together?

I think people are on the right track linking Data Governance and Data Quality. No need to rehash above. My one input would be that Data Quality should be the measuring stick for the success of Data Governance programs.

I do feel that some people align Data Governance too closely with data modeling and data object definition. There are examples in the comments above. Sure clean data is the end goal, but Data Governance is the journey to get there. Data Governance is more of a cultural shift starting with 1) Aligning business strategy toward a common goal; 2) Building definitions, re-engineering processes & updating systems to represent those aligned business strategies; 3) Defining data objects to store the common definitions; and finally 4) Measuring success based on quantitative analysis of Data Quality. Without that, Data Governance becomes a theoretical data modeling exercise, and all of our work is minimized. I’m sure this is more of a top-down approach than the classical definition, but it’s where Data Governance will go next.