Every day, thousands of gigabytes of data pass through the University of Colorado servers. While people are the heart of CU, data is its nervous system. The university now has a central location for all information related to how that data is managed and governed: CU Data Governance.

The CU Data Gov website is an excellent resource for all four campuses in perusing policies and guidelines around data, learning the roles and responsibilities of different data groups, and finding the resources or support you need. This website will continue to evolve as the CU data governance model is implemented and expands.

Beth Myers, associate vice chancellor of Academic Planning and Institutional Effectiveness at CU-Denver and co-executive sponsor of the Data Governance & Management project, shared her perspective on this milestone: “We are very excited to be at the “trailhead” of data governance. We have a long journey ahead but are taking big steps in the right direction by having an updated website with CU's data governance operating model available now. We are still early in the data governance journey here at CU. We look forward to the hike over the next few years and can’t wait to realize the full value of data governance when we reach the summit.”

Visit CU Data Governance

What is Data Governance?

CU Data Governance is a university-wide program to improve access to institutional data with greater usability and security. Data governance allows the university to curate its information resources effectively and provide data to decision-makers and stakeholders, so they have consistent, accurate, quality information to make decisions and communicate how the university operates.

Refer to the new Data Governance website to learn CU’s operating model for data governance, which establishes clear accountability, responsibility and escalation paths for decisions about data in compliance with CU’s systemwide policy.

What are the different roles and responsibilities within Data Governance?

The first step toward enacting data governance is clarity around roles and responsibilities. Visit Data Groups and Roles within the new Data Governance website to learn who serves on the Data Governance Executive Council, as a Data Trustee or a Data Stewardship Council.

Note: Single-sign-on authentication is required to access this information.

What resources does the Data Governance website offer?

All CU employees contribute to strong data governance at the University of Colorado, whether we produce, use or manage data. The new website provides easy access to all CU system-wide data-related policies and guidelines, with links to campus-specific Office of Information Technology data governance resources.

The most important resources the new site offers may be Data Classification and the Adverse Impact Table. Data classification helps determine the security requirements necessary to keep that specific data safe.  The impact levels are high, moderate and low and are explained in depth on the Data Classification web page.

In addition, the site shares all the data software solutions offered by University Information Services (UIS), links to campus data resources, and information about CU’s metadata catalog, Collibra.

What’s next?

The website was developed as part of CU’s Data Governance project, a multiyear university-wide project that aims to improve the university’s overall data management, security and use.

As part of this effort, data stewardship councils have been established for student data, institution research and finance data. They are accountable to the Data Governance Executive Council and govern data within their assigned data domain in support of stewardship, data quality and data management activities.

Going forward, data stewardship councils will be established for other CU business areas, such as employee (HR) information. As groups are formalized, the Data Governance website will expand to provide information specific to these data categories.

Where can I ask questions?

If you have a specific data governance question that is not addressed on the website, please contact the Data Governance support email.