CDOT Performance Data Business Plan - Cambridge Systematics

CDOT Performance Data Business Plan
4.0 Data Governance Plan
This section recommends an approach for data governance within CDOT. It
discusses opportunities for data governance at CDOT and documents
recommendations concerning how a data governance committee could best assist
the department in reporting on performance.
In evaluating data issues surrounding performance reporting, it quickly becomes
apparent that CDOT could benefit from a broader scaled data governance
approach. This section documents the observations and recommendations made
related to data management and governance at CDOT. The recommendations
cover data governance to support the performance measurement/reporting
process and CDOT business in general.
This section is organized as follows:
4.1 Best Practices – Review of other existing Data Governance Plans
4.2 Assessment of CDOT – State of Data Governance at CDOT
4.3 Recommendations
4.1 BEST PRACTICES
The application of data governance in a data management plan is critical and the
benefits are numerous. From a policy standpoint, data governance promotes the
understanding of data as a valuable asset to the organization and encourages the
understanding and management of data from both a technical and business
perspective. On a practical level, data governance provides for enterprise access
to data standards and metadata. It provides a central focus for identifying and
controlling the collection, storage, and sharing of data. Improved sharing of data
within CDOT can result in costs savings associated with data collection and
integration. Data governance also is very important from an IT perspective. It can
result in reduction of redundancy of maintenance of data systems, ensure that
data quality is closest to the source of data collection, and provide opportunities
to implement new and improved technologies for use in data programs. It also
provides flexibility in responding to changes in reporting requirements.
A data governance framework documents key business programs and data
systems, and defines roles and responsibilities for data owners, data stewards,
and data custodians. Organizations that have successfully implemented a data
governance framework tend to have the following factors in common:
Strong executive leadership;
Partnership between the IT and the business units of the organization;
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