Data Governance

One of the key ways that you can achieve buy in from your business partners is through a Data Governance team.   Who should be on this team?  You will need champions.   You need those folks from your business that run reports, source system owners, perhaps HR data, or another business unit that is involved with PII.  What is PII?

1. Personally identifiable information (PII) is any data that could potentially identify a specific individual. Any information that can be used to distinguish one person from another and can be used for de-anonymizing anonymous data can be considered PII.

One of my clients was involved in a law suit and to avoid violating PII, we had to monitor everything related to PII.  If you are in the Healthcare sector, you have a similar respect for data and understand the importance of HIPAA and more importantly violating HIPAA.   What is HIPAA?

1. HIPAA is the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. The primary goal of the law is to make it easier for people to keep health insurance, protect the confidentiality and security of healthcare information and help the healthcare industry control administrative costs.
2. This is extremely important to a new sector of Patient Safety related to keeping your patients safe.  As a Dr, do you wash your hands regularly?   Was there an issue with an incorrect medication?  Did you misdiagnose an issue?    Not only do you need to keep this data secure from people outside of your organization but also those groups within your organization that don't have the authorization to view said data.  
3. That's why it is extremely important to keep data issues such as data quality, data security and data accuracy at the forefront of your business.   That's where a data governance team would be an asset to your organization.    One of the key points is to attain buy in from a high level business sponsor.   A Vice President for example, that will chamption this issue and carry the clout necessary to spread the key decisions into the impacted organizations.  This data governance team will make changes to source systems and business processes that will transform your data quality and push for Best in Class Data processes and procedures.