ABSTRACT
The IT–IR nexus can be best understood as an opportunity for a series of collaborations around data: data production, use, distribution, and analysis. It can provide an institution's leaders with a critical advantage in the form of timely and relevant analysis that lends previously unknown insights into old problems or new opportunities. Data governance is a set of collaborative processes that has the aim of producing well-known standards (context) governing the production of precise and well-understood data. Data governance becomes something that often falls below the most pressing priorities of the day, and it becomes a second or third priority. Ultimate success for any good data governance initiative begins with the executive leadership of the institution. The challenge is to move beyond ordinary IT and IR skills and to work diligently with staff to identify and promote those competencies necessary to performing more than a transactional role.
