The Governance Institute of Australia (GIA) released its annual report and found that many Australian organisations lack the appropriate understanding of data governance and best practices.
The GIA conducted a survey of 345 individuals of varying levels of staff. Amongst those surveyed, 50% said their organisation did not have a data governance framework and approximately 60% believed that the board of their organisation did not understand the organisation’s data governance obstacles. This is alarming as the majority of the organisations believed that senior management and the CEO were responsible for data management practices. Further, cyberattacks on data stood out as the key risk for organisations, with only 30% of organisations regularly purging data.
In response to these findings, the GIA has made the following recommendations for organisations in relation to data governance practices:
- Provide greater education and training to members of organisations, particularly senior leadership on identifying and quantifying the data assets of the organisations, and providing relevant risk assessments for each data asset
- Develop guidelines for designing, implementing, and maintaining an effective data governance framework, namely identifying parties responsible for data management, defining responsibility, enacting policy and oversight mechanisms, and streamlining reporting and accountability
- Create mechanisms for collaboration within the organisation between technical, financial, risk management, legal, and administrative roles
- Implement methods to measure the success of data management via policies and procedures
For a full reading of the report, see here.
