Data management talk

NBMG has a need for more formalized data governance processes. At the moment, there are a lot of “one-off” solutions. This is hard to maintain over time and can compromise quality of data.

Data governance is “The overall management of the availability, usability, integrity, and security of the data employed in an enterprise. A sound data governance program includes a governing body or council, a defined set of procedures, and a plan to execute those procedures.”

What’s the difference between data management and data governance? If data management is the logistics of data, data governance is the strategy of data. It should feel bigger and more holistic. It should provide answers to how NBMG can determine and prioritize the benefits of creating and providing quality data while mitigating the risks of low-quality data and poor data management.

Overall goals

In basic terms, the point of a data strategy is to:

• Make your jobs easier
• Make NBMG’s workflows more streamlined, reproducible, and consistent
• Make our data higher-quality
• Make data more available and more easily discoverable to the public

A lot of progress has been made at NBMG and GBSSRL in the last year, but there’s still much work to be done. A new file system structure will help us get more organized, and then we can begin to migrate more data to a central system. Look out for a series of workshops on various data management topics coming this spring!

-Emily