Implementing and upholding data governance strategies requires focused attention. With one-fifth of enterprises drawing data from 1,000 or more sources, governance is an investment that impacts your entire company.

Despite attempts to streamline data governance workflows, many companies still rely on reactive processes and non-linear data sets that require manual effort. These manual governance roadblocks are highly complex, costly, and often deliver less than desirable results. 

Moving from manual efforts to increasingly automated data governance can aid companies in keeping up with the pace of data ingestion and growth. When applied correctly, automated elements of data governance reduce the time spent on manual data management, as well as complex initiatives. 

Before introducing automation, it’s important to identify and address the root causes of your data governance challenges for a thorough understanding of how automation can best aid your business.

Here’s what to consider as you explore governance automation—and why data contracts are essential to success.

The Approach to Automation

Automated data governance involves creating and implementing data policies for a truly comprehensive data governance strategy that considers people, processes, and technology:

• How does your business define data quality? 
• Are all data users (within and outside of IT) aware of their governance responsibilities? 
• Do you have existing policies for data acquisition, transformation, and connection?
• What are your procedures for data cleansing, system updates, and policy adherence? 

Answering these foundational questions builds alignment across IT and business stakeholders, leading to stronger governance strategies early in the data lifecycle. 

Moving governance activities “upstream” (also known as shifting left) emphasizes data definition and quality management before ingestion. This intuitive process is a welcome change from the traditional approach, which looks at large amounts of data and retroactively tries to define proper guidelines for use.

Evaluation and planning at the data source allows organizations to avoid the chaos of “top down” governance and realize the benefits of better analytics capabilities, data quality, and collaboration, while reducing the risk of non-compliance. 

Data Contracts and Data Governance

A shift-left data approach is a powerful tool, but buy-in across your company is the key to true success. Data contracts make this possible. 

A data contract is an agreement between a data producer and a data consumer that defines the data at a high level, including: 

• The type of data being exchanged
• The structure of that data
• How the data will be used
• Service level agreements
• Ownership details

By establishing these agreements early, organizations create a metadata-driven ingestion framework. Data contracts ensure that data is documented, structured, and understood from the moment it's ingested — not as an afterthought.

Key Benefits of Data Contracts: 

• Shared expectations: All stakeholders clearly understand their roles and data quality standards. 
• Dependency visibility: Organizations gain insights into application and domain relationships.
• Reduced reactivity: Metadata is built into ingestion, minimizing manual interventions.
• Living documentation: Contracts act as evolving records for data systems.
• Scalability: Once in place, contracts provide a framework for consistent, efficient onboarding of new data types.

Data Contracts Set the Foundation for Automated Data Governance

Data contracts can also be used to program automation platforms. The benefits of automated data governance include: consistent monitoring of incoming data against contract terms, reporting continuous audits, supporting security and compliance requirements, and flagging regulated data for proper handling. 

Automating these tasks allows for more streamlined workflows as data moves through its lifecycle and frees up governance teams to focus on strategic initiatives rather than endless cleanup projects. 

Data Contracts Are for Every Company

Data contracts aren’t only for a small sector of companies. Every organization needs governance, whether it uses streaming, batch, or manually entered data. Data contracts provide a foundational solution by: 

• Defining what constitutes good data
• Breaking down silos between IT and business teams
• Engaging all relevant stakeholders in the governance process 

Another perk is that data contracts don’t require you to hire new resources or learn a new programming language. If you have development capabilities in-house, you can create data contracts within your existing tech stack.

Implement Automated Data Governance Effectively with Kenway

While there’s no instant solution for improving data quality, data governance automation tools and resources can significantly lighten the load.

Data contracts create a strong foundation for platform automation and bridge the gap between IT and business departments. 

If your company needs additional resources to implement data contracts, Kenway can help. We coordinate across stakeholders, guide framework creation, and deploy technology solutions tailored to your industry or platform-specific needs—including regulated sectors like healthcare and finance, and support in Salesforce data governance.

For guidance on implementing data contracts and automating data governance, reach out to our experts today! 

FAQs

What is automated data governance?

Automated data governance is the process of automating data policies, business rules, and procedures. It’s not a replacement for a comprehensive data governance strategy, but it can help operationalize some aspects.

How can I automate data governance?

Implement metadata-driven ingestion, use data contracts, and leverage automation platforms to monitor and enforce governance policies. 

What is a data contract?

A data contract is an agreement between a data producer and data consumer that defines the data at a high level. It includes key metadata, such as how a piece of data is structured, when it’s available, and who owns it.