One of the key goals of Data Governance is to formalize the accountability for managing information in an organization.  Typically, the problem isn't that there is no one managing data standards; the problem is that there are too many people managing data standards.  I recently had a client that had a very weak Finance organization.  The various businesses controlled most of their Finance resources and had no problem structuring information is a way that benefited them.  This caused many conflicts between the businesses and corporate as there were few common metrics to evaluate performance.  In a well-functioning Data Governance environment, an Executive Sponsor is appointed to formalize the management of information assets.

The Executive Sponsor has overall responsibility for Data Governance.  In some companies such as Yahoo, this role has been elevated to the formal title of Chief Data Officer (CDO).  In most organizations that have a formal Data Governance function, however, the role is typically held by a senior Finance officer from one of the businesses.  This suprises some clients, as they often think that someone from the Shared Service Organization should hold the Executive Sponsor role.  In my experience this is not correct, as it is imperative that the business units take responsibility for the quality of data generated from their organizations.  If the businesses simply throw bad data "over the wall" to the SSO, data quality will never be acceptable.

Another issue that comes up is the role of IT.  My perspective is that IT has an important role in Data Governance, but that their role is to support the Executive Sponsor and related Data Governance committees as they establish standards for and manage information assets.  Data Governance effots led by IT are bound to dissapoint the business units no matter how hard IT works to satisfy them.

In addition to being a senior Finance officer in one of the businesses, the Executive Sponsor would ideally be well-known in the organization, have a history of leading transformation change in the organization, and hold both formal and informal leadership within the organization.

A strong Executive Sponsor for Data Governance is critical to the initiative.  With the right person in the role, a company can manage their information assets in a way that effectively produces value-added intelligence.