Data governance initiatives in an organization are intended to cover data quality, data management, and data policy issues. These activities are carried out by data stewards and a team that develops and implements business rules for administrating the use of data.

The focus on data governance is essential when the company has to implement a successful data integration strategy and use it for analysis, reporting, and decision-making. Here are some ways of making data integration projects more efficient with data governance:

• It brings IT and business teams together. Data governance identifies what is really important to the business and helps establish business rules that are crucial for data integration.

• A data governance program can help your company define and measure the potential ROI you get from maintaining data. You can use this information to calculate the ROI for data integration projects.

• It helps you learn who’s responsible for the data quality. Data governance provides valuable information that enables to appoint data stewards and decision makers for data integration projects. Since data governance tells you who’s responsible for the data, you know where to go to resolve data quality issues.

• Data governance can save you money, because it helps establish best practices and select cost-effective data integration and data quality tools.

Data governance and data integration are tightly connected with each other. You are not likely to enjoy data integration benefits without a strong governance program. On the other hand, data governance is only possible if your data is stored in an integrated system. My advice: make sensible use of both.