What is a Data Office?

The answer to this question is going to be quite short and succinct, much like the question itself… A ‘Data Office’, in my opinion, is just another term for having a central team that looks after Data Governance. 

The vast majority of clients that I have worked with over the years would probably call this a Data Governance team or a data quality team, but I do know a number of organisations who would call that a Data Office.

In my experience, a Data Office has perhaps a scope that is maybe a little wider than a traditional Data Governance team. They are the team which is supporting Data Governance and Data Quality within the organisation but may have a wider remit and also support Master Data Management and other data management activities.

So, it is perhaps a term that is not a direct comparison to a Data Governance team, but it's very similar.

If you have a central Data Governance team and you hear people talking about a Data Office, you're not lacking in something. As long as you've got a central support for your Data Governance Framework, it doesn't really matter what you call it.

But I find this is a good example of something that we do an awful lot as Data Governance professionals… we spend the majority of our days talking to business users and asking them to draft definitions for the data that they use, but at the same time, we use terminology that we don't always define or perhaps we use terminology that we don't use consistently and I think this is something that we definitely need to improve upon.

So, if you have a Data Office, fabulous. Make sure you explain what that means when you're sharing it with the business and if you have a Data Governance team, likewise.

You need to explain what that means to the business and use that definition consistently.

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