Data Governance

Data governance is the set of policies, processes, standards, and responsibilities that ensure data is managed, used, and protected according to organizational and regulatory requirements. It defines who owns data, who can access it, how quality is maintained, and how it must be handled under regulations like GDPR and CCPA.

Effective governance creates accountability across the data lifecycle: assigning data owners for each dataset, setting access policies based on sensitivity, establishing quality standards, and documenting how data is collected, processed, and retained.

As organizations ingest data from more external sources - APIs, third-party datasets, partner data - governance becomes more complex. Knowing the provenance of each data source, the terms under which it was licensed, and any restrictions on use is a governance requirement that should be addressed before building production pipelines on external data.