IBM Information Governance

Enhance information integrity, availability, and quality

Standards

Critical to any information governance program is consistency. Organizations need to ensure that information is well understood, commonly defined and the program goals communicated clearly.

Standards as they relate to information governance are about putting the right pieces in place from the start. Having standard processes, technologies, metrics and communication.

Focus Areas

There are seven main areas organizations should focus on when they think of standards in an information governance program:

  • Process: Define a standard process for how the information governance program will run. The process often includes templates, examples and documentation and steps. Some of these steps are defined by the IBM Information Governance Unified Process including: Define the business problem, obtain executive sponsorship, conduct a maturity assessment, build a roadmap and establish an organizational blueprint.
  • Vocabulary: Create a glossary of terms to ensure common definitions across different functional areas to avoid miscommunication. To be effective, the glossary needs to be populated with business terms that have been agreed to by the relevant areas.
  • Understanding: Analyze information and systems to know what exists, where it is and how they are related.
  • Metadata management: Metadata about enterprise sources and processes can enrich their context and meaning. Sometimes without metadata these information assets can be unidentifiable, untrusted and even unusable. Metadata management enables organizations to know where the data came from, who has touched it and where it is now.
  • Tooling: Provide a common way of governing information through standard toolsets which fit directly into a defined process. Understand metrics.
  • Metrics: Good governance requires continuous improvement. Critical to that improvement is knowing what is working and what isn’t. This requires standard measurements. Based on these results, we can adjust our processes and programs to meet the business needs.
  • Communication: Without strong communication, most processes fail. Organizations need a standard forum for communication. The communication should include the goals, metrics and results. Communicate the good and the bad and plans for improvement.

Next Steps

Resources

Data Governance Unified Process

Driving business value with IBM software and best practices

Additional Resources