A data governance policy is a documented set of guidelines for ensuring the proper management of an organization's digital information. Such guidelines can involve policies for business process management (BPM) and enterprise risk planning (ERP), as well as security, data quality and privacy.
A data governance policy formally outlines how business activity monitoring should be carried out to ensure organizational data is accurate, accessible, consistent and protected. The policy establishes who is responsible for information under various circumstances and specifies what procedures should be used to manage it.
A data governance policy is a living document, which means it is flexible and can be quickly changed in response to changing needs. An effective data governance policy requires a cross-discipline approach to information management and input from executive leadership, finance, information technology (IT) and other data stewards within the organization.