Institutional Data Governance Program
Turning institutional data into a trusted, strategic asset.
Data governance is the framework of roles, standards, and processes that ensures institutional data is accurate, secure, accessible, and relevant - enabling informed, strategic and operational decision-making across the university.
Start with your role
Governance responsibilities sit closest to the data. Find where you fit.
Accountable Owner Data Trustee
Domain authority over access, usage, and policy compliance.
Subject-Matter Expert Data Steward
Day-to-day execution, quality, and definitions for a domain.
Technical Management Data Custodian
Storage, security, pipelines, and access execution.
Faculty/Staff/Students Data User
Requesting, understanding, and responsibly using data.
Vision & Mission
A strategic asset, managed with intent.
UCSB will transform institutional data into a strategic asset; empowering staff, faculty, and students to make trusted, data-driven decisions across campus.
Mission
To establish and sustain a cross-functional framework of clear standards, defined roles, and repeatable processes that ensure data is accessible, accurate, and secure - maximizing value while reducing risk and operational cost.
Program Goals
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01
Set clear standards to improve data access, accuracy, and security.
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02
Maximize data value while reducing risk and operational cost.
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03
Empower staff, faculty, and students to use data effectively.
Objectives
- Data Accountability: Defining and fostering clear responsibility and stewardship for information assets throughout their lifecycle.
- Data Quality: Establishing measurable standards for data and embedding ongoing monitoring, issue identification, and remediation processes to continuously improve the trustworthiness of institutional data.
- Data Utilization: Maximizing the value and utility of information for operational and strategic decision-making.
- Data Access: Enhancing the availability of information for authorized stakeholders, promoting information sharing, and reducing information silos across UCSB while enabling auditability and the ability to validate access decisions.
- Data Security & Privacy: Implementing measures to safeguard sensitive information, ensuring compliance with relevant protection regulations and policies, and enhancing community trust.
- Data Lineage & Provenance: Capturing and exposing the origin, flow, and transformation of institutional data to build trust, support root-cause analysis of quality issues, and provide traceability for downstream use and reporting.
- Compliance & Auditing: Ensuring adherence to regulations and internal policies through effective monitoring, auditing, and reporting mechanisms.
Explore the program
Everything you need, page by page.
Roles & Responsibilities Structure & Roles
How accountability is distributed-from the ITC Commitee to Trustees, Stewards, and Custodians.
Operating & Framework Components
The five components: roles, access lifecycle, catalog, quality, and technology.
Guiding Principles Principles
The seven priciples that balance every governance decision-from accountability to empowerment.
Read the principles
Processes & Workflows Processes
The Data Access Lifecycle-requested, evaluated, provisioned, monitored, and audited, and revoked
Follow the lifecycle
Policies & Standards Classification
Every asset gets a protection level (P1-P4) that drives access and handlings rules.
Question & Help Contact
Reach the right group-program direction, coordination, or domain-specif data.