Once focused mainly on regulatory compliance and mitigating risk, data governance is experiencing a marked shift in focus. Organizations and users have begun to grasp the power of data in driving business goals. As a result, the future of data governance moves beyond simple compliance to a more proactive and holistic approach.
Collaborative governance focuses on engaging people and processes to uncover business benefits. Moving forward, data governance strategies will include an emphasis on building data literacy. They will harness technologies like AI and machine learning (ML) more efficiently. And they will streamline metadata management while addressing the complexities of the cloud.
Increasing Data Literacy to Promote Data Democratization
Too often, organizations make data governance an IT concern and focus on the technologies involved. Implementing the right technologies in the right way can certainly support data governance. However, governance works best when users understand the power of data and their role in ensuring data integrity and security.
Moving forward, successful organizations will work to democratize data with the goal of making trusted data safely available to those who need it. Data literacy efforts aim to educate users about best practices for securing and processing data. When all users take ownership for corporate data, both compliance and data-driven decision making improve.
Harnessing the Power of AI, ML and Automation
Even when companies achieve a high level of data literacy, the huge amounts of data to process require sophisticated technology. In the coming months and years, organizations will increasingly access the power of AI and machine learning to automate the organization and use of data.
When governance tools include built-in AI and ML capabilities from the start, systems can process information more quickly and accurately. For instance, a ML system can automate many manual tasks and detect anomalies that would indicate fraud or security issues.
Metadata Management for the Win
Simply put, metadata consists of information about data. This includes a host of details, from owner and creation date to the history of changes made to the data, rules for access and more. Metadata management, done right, allows organizations to realize several key benefits from their data.
In the first place, metadata makes data more visible and retrievable. Users can find the data they need in seconds by entering a keyword and other parameters. And, because metadata can apply to images and videos, the results include more than just text documents. Once they have the data, metadata can provide clues on how to understand it.
Additionally, metadata tags can prescribe access and usage rights, drive archiving and provide an audit trail. This helps companies demonstrate regulatory compliance. It also provides users the assurance that they are working with the most recent and accurate information. By ensuring data integrity and reducing redundancy, metadata extends data lifespan.
While metadata is not a new concept by any means, manually inputting metadata remains a daunting task. Fortunately, emerging technologies in cognitive computing offer the capability of automating metadata.
Addressing the Challenges and Opportunities of the Cloud
Migrating data to the cloud has made data more accessible. However, it raises additional challenges in terms of data privacy, and it affects the data governance strategies and tools involved.
To achieve success, companies need to choose data governance tools that work in a hybrid cloud or multi-cloud environment. They also need to look for privacy regulations to evolve around cloud storage and how it impacts data security. At the very least, companies will need to update their data encryption methods.
Matching the Future of Data Governance to Business Goals
The future of data governance looks bright. Moving away from checkbox compliance to supporting business strategies changes data governance from a chore to an opportunity. The governance consultants at Messaging Architects will help your organization choose and implement governance solutions to match your business needs.
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eGovernance is a Cloud based solution for preserving, discovering and accessing digital data within your email and document storage systems for compliance, audit, security, eDiscovery and warehousing of critical or older data.
