The objective of an Integrated Governance Architecture is to establish a technical architecture framework that includes a set of standards, policies, products, recommendations, and best practices in order to guide organizations in designing their technological and business solutions, promoting an optimized use of State IT resources.
This framework also provides medium-term continuous improvement methodologies based on an integrated vision that allows organizations to keep their organizational information structure up-to-date, aligning processes in their different dimensions.
Many companies currently face the general situation related to the load placed on the use and the storage of data and need to add value by making good use of data in order to innovate and modernize their operations and continue to meet mandatory requirements and the management of information required by the institution to make decisions.
DATA GOVERNANCE MANAGEMENT
The Integrated Governance Architecture is based on different frameworks, among which the ones most used are TOGAF, DAMA, DMBOK, Cobit, etc. In this article, we will talk about The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF), an Enterprise Architecture framework that provides an approach to designing, planning, implementing, and governing of an enterprise information architecture.
This architecture is usually modeled in four domains or dimensions: Business, Technology (IT), Data, and Applications. It has a set of basic architectures that seek to facilitate the architecture team in defining the current and future state of the architecture.
No matter what tool you use, just analyze that governance is part of the architecture, and the chosen tool should be able to integrate with all elements of a global architecture.
With the current data management, the aim is to maintain and/or improve competitive advantages in order to make decisions, and in some cases, they collaborate with companies by providing information related to policies and procedures that allow the establishment of better mechanisms to protect their data and regulatory compliance.
REFERENCE MODELS
To avoid starting without any guidance, frameworks such as TOGAF enable us to have a reference model that should be included in the integrated technology governance architecture and seeks to represent the specific components in each of the domains, including the roles and behavior of each one of them.
The references obtained can be used to manage possible projects, analyze the new functionalities of common projects, show the impact of a new change in an organization’s architecture, and identify opportunities for improvement, among others.
In the Integrated Governance Architecture, the following domains should be developed according to the characteristics of the companies:
- Technology Domain: Describes the technological infrastructure that supports the physical and logical components of data and applications.
- Business Domain: Describes an organization by means of the identification of its mission, vision, and main products and services support. The business architecture defines the business strategy, governance, and key processes.
- Application Domain: Describes the software applications that support business processes, products, and services.
- Security Domain: Presents a reference cybersecurity framework of best practices, organized and with references at international standards.
- Data Domain: Describes the structure of physical and logical data assets, as well as data management resources.
DATA GOVERNANCE MODEL STRUCTURE
An enterprise architecture with data governance implementation provides the following value to organizations:
- General principles and regulatory framework: a set of directives, regulations, and guidelines applicable to any organization to develop processes and information systems according to State needs and priorities.
- Reference Models: For Integrated Governance Architecture domains, reference models are presented along with guidelines for their development, seeking to identify the main components of the architecture in each of these domains.
- Repository: Aimed at facilitating the efficient use of ICT in the State, the availability of architecture documentation, components, and solutions, and knowledge centers associated with various disciplines.
- Government Processes and Continuous Improvement (Architecture Continuum): these are the necessary processes and tools to adapt and govern the assets and models of the Integrated Government Architecture to different specific architectures.
BENEFITS OF DATA GOVERNANCE
As part of the enterprise architecture, data governance helps with the following points:
- Promotes information sharing within the organization
- Delivers value more quickly and effectively to internal and external customers, in terms of service quality and agility.
- Provides a common language for describing architectures in each of the represented domains.
- Facilitates the development of processes and the provision of shared services.
- Identifies an organization’s own software architecture
- Organizes all the organizational information on an integrated scale of the different departments.
- Facilitates interoperability and provides technical and management standards for agencies.
- Improves investment times in IT, in terms of service quality and agility.
- Provides a model for defining an organization from the perspective of its architecture.
IMPLEMENTATION APPROACH
The quality of the implementation of a Data Governance Model determines the level of success with which data management procedures can positively evolve over time. For the process to have continuity and be able to evolve, a good governance model must be implemented correctly, constant diagnoses must be made through established KPIs used as metrics for how management behaves. These metrics can help provide information that enhances project viability, decisions that affect multiple units, and cost reduction, among others.
CONCLUSIONS
Data is the most important asset of the organization and without data standards and quality, no value will be added to the excellence center of the enterprise architecture. Therefore, it is important to understand the activities aimed at promoting the construction of a participatory and collaborative model. This is why the general objective of data governance is to ensure that the organization’s data is legitimate and fairly unalterable. It is therefore mandatory to protect the integration of the information, that all units of the organization have the knowledge of why and for what purpose their data is used for, and the purpose, which is their correct use.
At Arkkosoft, we have trained and certified personnel who can collaborate with your enterprise architecture and data governance projects, and we would like to discuss our success stories in such projects in sectors such as government, financial institutions, telecom, and retail.
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