What is Data Governance ?
Data Governance answers the question  "Are we doing the right things ?"

Compliance, by contrast, answers the question "Are we doing things right ?" and is concerned with ensuring Compliance
with corporate policies and procedures for Data Management.
Comliance includes Best Practice for Data Management, such as creating the appropriate range of Data Models.

Data Governance requires that Roles and Responsibilities are established for Enterprise Data Management by
complying with the appropriate rules, policies and procedures.

These will all be designed to make sure that data used throughout the Enterprise is good-quality data, especially
when it appears in Performance reports.

This applies, for example, to Master Data Management (MDM), where it is very important that Roles and Responsibilities
are defined and followed for making changes to Master Data.

The current approach (in May, 2015)  is to group Governance, Risk and Compliance together called GRC and
address them with an integrated approach.

It's worth checking out Wikipedia on Data Governance and Governance, Risk Management and Compliance.

And here's a great Data Governance product called Collibra

Why is it important ?

The CEO needs to be able to put hand-on-heart and say 'I guarantee that the data in my organisation's
publications is Good and reliable'.

It is also very important that Users have confidence in the data in their Reports and BI Analyses.

How do we get started ?
1. Establish Policies, Procedures, Roles and Responsibilities
2. Look for candidates
3. Aim for results in six months and interim results in three months.