Objective

Creating a Data Quality Policy is one of the key goals for maturing your organisational capability towards data quality.

Perhaps your company has successfully delivered several data quality improvements and they now want to 'bake in' some of the best practices and standards they've been adopting.

The aim of this assignment is to help you create a new data quality policy in your organisation utilising a range of resources found within the Mark Allen presentation (Creating Data Management Discipline Through Defining and Executing Data Policies) as a foundation, with other external resources where applicable.

Task 1: Define Your Scope

Instead of diving into policy creation, Mark Allen recommends taking some time to map out the scope and approach of your data policy.

At 3:00 in the video, Mark explains that Policy Execution Issues are commonplace. Part of the problem stems from three areas according to Mark:

• Poor Definition and Target of the Policy

• Inability to Measure the Policy

• Inability to Control the Policy

These issues stem from a clear lack of scope and failure to adopt the right approach.

At 5:45 in the video, Mark outlines two considerations (with examples) for your scope:

• Enterprise-wide data policy scope

• Organizational or domain-specific data policy

Action Point: Your first task is to therefore determine what scope do you want your data quality policy to consist of?

• Enterprise-Wide:

  • Applies to all functions across the organisation and all data domains

  • Must be reviewed and approved at a high-level, typically by some form of committee or board, ideally data governance related

• Organizational or domain-specific data policy

  • Only applies to activities and standards within a business area or data domain

  • Authority is made lower down the approval hierarchy, stewards decide if authority needs to be flagged higher

Task 2: Define the Draft Structure of Your Data Quality Policy

At 7:00 in the presentation, Mark Allen introduces the overall structure of a data policy:

• Title

• Policy Summary

• Change Log

• Contents

• Background and Objectives

• Definitions

• Purpose

• Scope

• Policy or Procedure

• Exceptions

• Sanctions for Non-Compliance

Action Point: You don’t have to use this exact structure, but take some time to come up with a suitable structure for your Data Quality Policy.

Here are some other examples from different industries to help you shape the structure:

1. How to Create a Data Quality Policy (Data Quality Pro)

2. Manchester Metropolitan University Data Quality Policy (Education)

3. Provide Data Quality Policy (Healthcare)

4. West Suffolk Council (Local Government)

5. Durham County Council (Local Government)

Task 3: Defining the Content and Detail

The next challenge Mark discusses (at 7:04 in the video) is the type of content and detail to include in your data quality policy.

Mark recommends that you use the correct terminology for terms such as:

• Policy

• Standard

• Regulation

• Process

• Procedure

• Business Rule

Mark recommends creating a consistent template across the organisation so that the same definitions are applied as you assemble your enterpise library for policies such as your data quality policy.

Action Point: Take some time to create a glossary of the different terms you will need to include in your data quality policy so that different audiences (e.g. business, technical) will understand the terms.

Task 4: Define the Audiences and Touch Points for the Data Quality Policy

Data Quality Policy Audiences

It’s essential to think about your target audience for the data quality policy as this can span many different user, leadership, technical and partner communities across your organisation.

At 8:09 in the video, Mark Allen introduces the requirement to map out all of your potential touch points for the policy so you can include them in the final document or template.

For example, a data quality policy for an Anti-Money Laundering compliance policy could consist of:

1. All new accounts should be verified and validated to confirm accuracy of identity against at least 3 approved, surrogate, sources

2. Customer data records should be consistent with their specified data quality rule and must not be duplicated

3. Every customer must be cross-referenced daily with the Independent AML Watchlist service provider

4. Every data transformation, AML watchlist verification or data quality improvement carried out on a customer record must be audited and logged

From these 4 policy statements, you could assume that the following audiences are required:

• AML Director

• Customer Account Manager

• Customer Data Steward

• Customer Data Quality Manager

• 3rd Party AML Watchlist team

• Customer DBA

• Data Governance Manager

Action Point: Make a note of the target audiences for your proposed policy.

Data Quality Policy Touch Points

Your data quality policy will impact not only individuals but physical processes. In our example above, the following touch points were observed:

• Customer Onboarding

• Customer Data Quality Validation

• AML Service Delivery

• Security and Audit

These additional touch points also need to be covered in your data quality policy so that the scope of the policy can instantly be observed.

Action Point: Document all the functional touch points that your policy will need to encompass.

Task 5: Create an Implementation Structure

Once you understand your scope of the policy, you then need to think about how you’re going to structure it to cope with:

• ‘Parent’ and aligning policies e.g. Compliance, Security, Data Standards, Technology Standards

• ‘Child’ policies e.g. specific data / business rules stemming from the overarching data quality policy

Your implementation structure therefore becomes critical.

At 9:08 in the video presentation, Mark Allen outlines some of the distinct implementation choices you will need to make:

• Will your policy be relevant to one data management subject area e.g. Equipment or Customer Data, or will it span all data domains?

• Will you document all of the underlying standards, rules, controls and requirements in one document or link to them under a hiearchy of supporting documents?

At 10:08 in the video, Mark provides an example of a Single Policy implementation structure, using Information Security as his sample policy.

At 11:33 in the video, Mark explains how to set up a Multi Policy implementation structure. This uses an MDM example but with supporting ‘child’ policies to create a more complex structure.

Action Point: Using the information found in the video, create your own proposed Implementation Structure for the data quality policy.