Peak Performance Technologies is often asked to help our education and government customers with data analytic projects.  Many of our projects have focused around PeopleSoft's EPM/OBIEE and Oracle Data Warehouses but we have also worked with several other products in the marketplace and custom developed datamarts.  Several of our team have served in executive positions within education and government customers.  We start by asking several very basic yet important questions:  Who owns the data?  Who is allowed to access the data?  Is your data clean?  Where does your data reside?  

Most of the time when we ask those basic questions our customers do not know the answers.  Therefore we recommend a Data Governance Assessment that encompasses the people, processes and technology required to create a consistent, enterprise view of an organization's data in order to:

• • Increase consistency & confidence in decision making
  • Decrease the risk of regulatory fines
  • Improve data security
  • Create consistent information quality across the organization
  • Designate accountability for information quality

In practical terms, this means putting personnel, policies, procedures, and organizational structures in place to make data accurate, consistent, secure, and available to accomplish organizational mission. It takes on special focus for our clients with legal requirements related to sensitive customer data. Effective data governance will require participation and commitment of both Information Technology and business management as well as senior-level executive sponsorship.
Data governance should be planned, managed and implemented through a three-level structure:

• • The Executive Data Governance Council (Executive Council) provides strategic direction, ensuring that data governance effects address all relevant and mission critical needs of the enterprise. It manages data governance as an integrated program rather than a set of unconnected projects
  • The Strategic Data Governance Steering Committee (Strategic Committee) carries out plans and policies to implement guidance from the Executive Council. It prioritizes the data governance efforts, communicates with stakeholders and identifies staff (data stewards) to oversee areas of data (data domains)
  • The Tactical Data Governance Work Group (Tactical Group) implements plans and policies developed by the Strategic Committee, and analyzes and resolves any tactical problems that arise. 

Scope of Services

• • Define initial data governance organization
  • Determine our approach
  • Establish a structure
  • Explicitly define Roles & Responsibilities
  • Identify individuals for these roles
  • Provide on-going training and capacity building
  • Identify an issue escalation / resolution process