Data Governance Program

Policies, standards and guidelines can be described as the "Rules of Engagement". Most of these are focused on controlling the behaviour over the definition, production, organization, and use of information. This pillar helps determine who has authority to make decisions regarding access, priorities, data standards, and the conditions under which these decisions can be made.

The Data Quality Framework is based on various industry standards. It is an iterative process, developed to enable UBC community to partner and collaborate in order to obtain true value and achieve the benefits of good quality data. Data quality is a fundamental requirement to enable data informed decisions. UBC leaders require reliable consistent and coherent data to ensure appropriate informed decisions can be made. An integrated approach that supports a culture of data quality and engagement of faculty, students and staff is required to meet the information needs of the UBC community.

How UBC manages the inherent risk that comes along with collecting sensitive data is an essential part of the Data Governance Program. Developing the risk management strategies and making those operational are under the purview of the program. Additionally, compliance with record retention policies for differing record types. The Data Governance Program should align with and coordinate with records management to ensure compliance to this end.

Ensuring that there are common data definitions and that those definitions are made available across multiple platforms is essential to enabling informed decision making. Common data is used to describe existing and future capabilities of the institution, formulate a sustainable information architectural ecosystem, and guide institution-wide data integration. Decisions on what those definitions are and how the requirements of those definitions are technically supported is a part of the program.

Data Governance strives to ensure the University will have reliable and consistent data to assess performance and support decision-making. This is achieved by having data that is available, accurate, complete, secure, and trustworthy. To this end, data ownership, roles and responsibilities, processes, standards, and policies as defined within the Data Governance program underpin the foundation of any successful Reporting and Analytics initiative. Furthermore, governance over reporting, including having a set of standards and guidelines, is required to promote clear communication about data to users. In addition, standard definitions and approved sources of data will guard against inconsistencies or misinterpretations of the data reported. Knowing that the data can be relied on, the University can trust the delivered reports and confidently base their business decisions on them to optimize operations and strategies.

Effective governance is not a one-time exercise, but rather a fully developed effort and repeatable process – executed by people and supported by technology. Governed and principled management of data, are the only way to ensure ongoing compliance with institutional standards and requirements, and data integrity in light of future changes (such as evolving business challenges, emerging technologies and new data flows).

It is through principled data management that UBC can achieve trusted data. It is about working together on fixing and preventing issues with data in order to make data driven decisions. Data governance also describes an evolution to a new paradigm in the institution's way of thinking to avoid silos of data and make information available institution-wide. It is about using technology to support the business processes.