The purpose of IDG at UCalgary is to … “Use Strategic Data with Confidence”. 

Strategic data is the “data that enables informed decision making”, while confidence in that data equates to “validating and trusting that the data is accessible and timely, complete and accurate, understood and secured”.

 the scope of data governance is the management of structured institutional data, decisions regarding the collection, retention, duplication, quality control, definition and sharing of such data. Information governance, which will include records management and unstructured data is not within the scope of this data governance framework at the time of writing this document.  
 

The primary drivers for implementing data governance and this framework at the University of Calgary are as follows:

• improving data quality and thereby improving confidence in institutional data;
• facilitating and enabling auditable / certified reporting sources that will allow consumption of data from authoritative data assets that are certified for authenticity;
• identifying data stewardship. Better accountability and data stewarding will improve trust and confidence in data being reported both externally and internally;
• establishing agreed upon and enforceable Institutional agreements for data sharing and use;
• establishing consistency in understanding of data definition. Better understanding of data definitions will promote consistent usage; and,
• producing effective data governance processes, standards, procedures and guidelines.