Data Standards

Question 1

Data stewardship

Answer 1

Careful, responsible management of something entrusted to one’s care (in this case data) on behalf of others

Question 2

How can data stewardship be enforced?

Answer 2

Assigning people responsible for deciding/acting on how data is stored/accessed

Question 3

Data governance policy

Answer 3

Determines how an organisation collects/stores/uses data

Question 4

Data governance policies should…

Answer 4

Comply with relevant laws and cover the entire life cycle of data (from collection to deletion)

Question 5

Four pillars of data governance

Answer 5

• Stewardship
• Quality
• Management
• Use cases

Question 6

Why is data governance important?

Answer 6

It helps to prevent data breaches, where sensitive data can be leaked and used for things like blackmail or identity theft

Question 7

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

Answer 7

• You should collect the minimum amount of data needed
• You should only collect relevant data
• Steps should be taken to protect data and report breaches
• Data should be retained for the shortest time possible
• Relevant people can request access to their data and request their data is deleted

Question 8

True or false: Anonymous data is not protected under GDPR

Answer 8

True! Data that can’t be linked to a person isn’t protected. However, pseudonymous data is as it can be reverse engineered to identify someone.

Question 9

True or false: Under the GDPR, organisations cannot share your data with third parties for any reason

Answer 9

False! Data can be shared with other organisations in certain circumstances (e.g. for a criminal investigation).

Question 10

What makes data valuable?

Answer 10

o Relevance of the data
o Correctness of the data
o Potential to make money

Question 11

What costs can come with data?

Answer 11

o	Storing and retrieving data
o	Ensuring the data is appropriately protected
o	Hardware and software costs
o	Staff costs
o	Legal costs

Question 12

Thematic content analysis

Answer 12

Categorising data based on themes

Question 13

Data versioning

Answer 13

Any changes made to data should be recorded and the original copy retained

Question 14

How can data quality be improved?

Answer 14

o Thematic content analysis
o Merging data sources
o Recording relevant metadata

Question 15

Information life cycle

Answer 15

• Tier 1 - Peak value, should be processed and interpreted to maximise value
• Tier 2 - New, unprocessed data, or older data that may not be as relevant
• Tier 3 - Old data that is to be archived and is unlikely to be useful

Question 16

Data should be available at the right time and in the right way. How can this be done?

Answer 16

o Recent/useful data should be easy to access
o Older/less useful data should be stored for possible future use
o Metadata should be used where appropriate

Question 17

Organisational enablers

Answer 17

o Highly focused business strategy
o Aligned IT and business strategy
o Centralised IT structure

Question 18

Organisational inhibitors

Answer 18

o Complex mixture of products and services
o Misaligned strategies
o Decentralised IT structure

Question 19

Industry enablers

Answer 19

o Regulations, especially those that apply to multiple regions
o Predictable rate of data growth
o Using industry-wide data standards

Question 20

Industry inhibitors

Answer 20

o Regulations that vary by region

o Lack of industry-wide data standards

Question 21

Technological enablers

Answer 21

o Promoting strategic use of IT

o Standardisation

Question 22

Technological inhibitors

Answer 22

o Data hoarding

o Legacy/outdated IT systems

Question 23

How can a data governance policy be defined?

Answer 23

o A single document
o Spread across multiple groups depending on how they use data
o Incorporated into staff training
o Formed as part of standard working practices (i.e. data management software)