Understanding the framework - Data360_Govern - Preview

Business assets

The main asset type in the Business Assets glossary is the Business Term. Business terms do not exist in isolation, but are stored in applications, used in reports and processes and may be licensed from external sources and providers. The glossary forms an inventory of these assets and the relationships that exist between them, and provides a consistent, commonly understood and agreed upon, set of terms used throughout your organization. For example:

You can assign an owner to a term, and you can identify its relationship to other terms, to contractual obligations, and to governmental regulations. Through graphical depictions of these relationships, you can easily identify the impact that it might have if you choose to redefine a term.

For example, suppose that you work for a manufacturing company, and you have contractual obligations related to deliveries. You assume that everyone in your company understands what "delivery" means. However, you learn that:

• Your warehouse manager believes that a delivery has been fulfilled when the product has left the loading dock.
• Your sales manager believes that a delivery has been fulfilled when the product arrives at the customer site.
• Your customer support manager believes that a delivery has been fulfilled when the product is installed and usable.

Data360 Govern enables you to provide a universal, agreed-upon definition for this term.

For more information on working with assets, see Browsing business assets, or if you are a system administrator and want information on how to configure asset types, see Establishing Business Asset types.

Models

Models are used to organize assets into hierarchical structures.

Models are often broken down by business function, such as Human Resources and Finance. You might choose to establish a separate model for each function, and then create sub-domains to further break down the classifications. For example, the Human Resources function might have sub-groupings for Payroll, Benefits, and Recruitment.

Each model can be assigned its own properties (business metadata) and responsible party (for example, business owner or data steward). Related assets can then inherit responsibility assignments from associated models. Responsibilities are used to establish ownership between users and assets, controlling the extent to which nominated users can create, modify and manage their associated assets.

For more information on working with models, see Models, or if you are a system administrator and want information on how to configure models, see Model types.

Policies

Policies provide governance and compliance to assets. A policy can be an industry or governmental regulation (such as GDPR or BCBS239), or it can be internal to your organization such as an IT or security policy. Policies also govern data quality rules which you can apply to assets to ensure compliance.

For more information on working with policies, see Policies, or if you are a system administrator and want information on how to configure policies, see Policy types.

Technical assets

Assets are organized into hierarchies by models, governed by policies, and associated to technical metadata via Connectors.

Connectors are data flows that are built in Data360 Analyze to extract technical metadata from external sources, such as:

• Flat files (for example, XML, CSV).
• Databases (for example, SQL Server, Oracle).
• Applications (for example, SAP).

After importing technical metadata to Data360 Govern, you can then use Promotion Rules data flows created in Data360 Analyze to take the externally sourced metadata from your Technology Asset repositories in Data360 Govern and promote specified items to your business glossaries, relating the metadata to existing assets in your data governance system.

See Connectors for a list of supported Connectors, or contact support to discuss your connector requirements.

Workflows

Workflows bridge the gap between the data governance framework and day to day activities by allowing users who have been assigned different responsibilities to collaborate on assets. This allows you to involve all members of your business in your data governance strategy.

For more information on working with workflows, see Workflows.

Relationships

Relationships link asset types to each other, and to other data assets in the system such as policies and models.

To view a graphical representation of an asset in the context of its relationships, click the Diagrams tab.

See Defining relationships between assets.

Rules

It is the responsibility of the system administrator to define and maintain a set of quality rules to enable Data Steward and Business Owner users to use these quality rules as a framework for collecting quality metrics from other systems and relating them to the assets governed by the system.

For more information on working with data quality rules, see Quality rules.

Reference Lists

Reference lists are lists of enumerations that you can make available as custom field values, to be displayed and chosen from drop-down lists.

For more information on working with reference lists, see Reference lists.

Semantic types

Semantic types help to describe the type of information that data represents, and can be assigned to assets as required.

For more information on working with semantic types, see Semantic types.

Responsibilities

Responsibilities are used to establish ownership between users and assets, controlling the extent to which nominated users can create, modify and manage their associated assets.

For more information on creating or editing responsibility types, see Establishing responsibilities.

Customizing the framework

You can build on the Govern Standard Metamodel Template, or build a configuration from scratch, to tailor your data governance operating model to the specific needs of your business.

To identify the assets that you need to create and manage, you should analyze your most significant business reports and answer the following sort of questions:

• What is the origin of this report?
• Is this report produced on a regular schedule and does it have significance to your organization? If so, it should be entered as an asset.
• What format is the report in?
• Is the report generated for an internal or external audience?
• What person or group of people is responsible for this report and what is their role within your organization?
• Does this report have any dependencies?
• Are there other similar or related reports?
• Are there obvious report fields that should be defined as business terms? Remember, you are concerned with the metadata surrounding the field, rather than the contents of the field itself.

For business terms:

• What is the accepted definition of the term?
• What systems store this term?
• Which system is the authoritative source?
• What domain does the term belong to (for example, Human Resources or Finance)?
• Is there a domain list associated with the term?
• Which parties (business owner, data steward) are responsible for the term?
• Is the term considered critical? If so you may choose to create a field or flag that you can use to designate certain items as critical.
• Are there any synonyms or other names or abbreviations in use for the term?
• Are there any restrictions on its use?
• Is the term personal or sensitive information? You may choose to create a field or flag that you can use to designate certain items as personal.
• Does the term require compliance with any known governmental regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley or GDPR? You will need to enter those compliance programs as assets.

In the User Guide section of the help, the topics describe how to browse and search your system for existing assets. Browsing will help you to understand how your organization classifies and defines the assets it creates and tracks. Searching for assets will allow you to check for items which already exist in the system. You can then collaborate on these existing items, asking questions or raising issues where necessary.

If you are a system administrator and want information on how to modify or expand your framework, see Configuration.