Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Data! A constitutional democracy approach to data governance at the UW

Presentation Summary

Bill Yock, University of Washington

The University of Washington has created a “constitutional democracy” approach to governance of data management practices. The UW Institutional Data Management Standards document serves as our base “constitution” setting forth fundamental principles, definitions and responsibilities. It establishes three primary governance bodies of Data Trustees, (Executive branch) Data Custodians (Legislative branch) and the Data Management Committee (Judiciary branch). The rules of law are established by fundamental principal statements (Bill of Rights) as well as guideline documents (Amendments). Legislative districts were established by drawing up boundaries using a “Data Map” that indicate system and business domains. This constitutional democracy approach has stood the test of time and proven itself to be a sustainable and repeatable process serving the citizens of the republic well.
This presentation is an excerpt from an article published in the “Information Management Best Practices – Volume 1” book from The Information Management Foundation. www.timaf.org