Tools over rules for data governance

Data governance initiatives often deliver a set of rules for people to follow when they create and manage data.

But these rules are expensive. They slow teams down and take significant human effort to follow and prove compliance.

(That’s assuming they are being followed 😀.)

A better approach is to provide tools that make it easy to follow the rules. Then, as long as you are using the tools you know you are compliant.

A good place to build this tooling is around a data contract.

So for example, if a data producer is using a data contract to manage their data, and they have categorised which fields contain personal data, you can easily create tools that ensure that personal data is handled in accordance with your data governance rules.

Those tools could:

• Automatically apply access policies
• Perform GDPR data deletions
• Encrypt data at rest

Or anything else you need to do to securely handle personal data.

So, when it comes to data governance, choose tools over rules.