National Archives and Records Administration Data Governance Board (DGB) Charter

I. Purpose

This charter formally establishes the Data Governance Board (DGB) within the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to steer the management of data as a strategic asset and aid data-driven decisions across the agency. The DGB will create a forum for centralizing responsibilities, decisions, and processes for all enterprise data management related activities (see section V).

The increased focus and attention given to NARA’s data assets have been the impetus for new strategies to manage these resources. Data governance is one method that can make better use of the information that drives our business and data management practices.

Data governance is a business and an Information Technology (IT) function that defines the data governance guiding principles, decision-making bodies, and decision rights. Along with data stewards, the process of data governance will oversee data management activities, including data architecture, quality, lifecycle, analytics, and security, as well as metadata management. Data management works in tandem with records management toward their respective goals and objectives. In most cases, records management principles will apply to data, such as maintaining authentic, reliable, and usable data, and ensuring that data is usable for the length of the authorized records retention and disposition period.

II. Authority

• Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018
• Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Memoranda M-19-23 (Phase 1 Implementation of the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018: Learning Agendas, Personnel, and Planning Guidance)
• Federal Data Strategy - Action 2 - Constitute a diverse data governance body

III. Mission

The mission of the Data Governance Board is to:

• Promote data governance at the enterprise level to support the agency's data needs by setting policies, creating a data lifecycle, and defining standard operating procedures for enterprise data management practices.
• Organize and manage NARA’s datasets to make them easily accessible across the Government and to the general public to the extent possible.
• Define an enterprise data governance framework.
• Define and monitor data management practices at the enterprise and IT system level.
• Define the data governance program objectives, guiding principles, and data stewardships.
• Implement the Federal Data Strategy within NARA in accordance with OMB and General Services Administration (GSA) guidance that applies to all agencies.
• Publish data sets on Data.gov and review requests and datasets to be published across the agency.
• Recommend self-service data analytics for making data-supported decisions.
• Guide agency investment in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) and recommendations around the ethical use of AI/ML.

IV. Membership

• Chief Data Officer (CDO, Chair)
• Charter Secretariat (CDO staff representative)
• Deputy Archivist of the United States (ND)
• Chief Information Officer (CIO)
• Deputy Chief Information Officer (DCIO)
• Chief Technology Officer (CTO)
• Chief Innovation Officer (CINO)
• Chief Records Officer (CRO)
• Chief Privacy Officer (CPO, in NGC)
• Chief FOIA Officer (NGC)
• Executive from Research Services (R)
• Executive from Agency Services (A)
• Agency Records Officer (ARO, in Corporate Records Management)

V. Functions

The Data Governance Board will be a cross-functional, enterprise-wide team that collectively defines data management practices and governs and manages the enterprise data.

The DGB brings system owners/data stewards, Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), and technical data experts together to discuss issues, streamline processes, and enhance data management practices including metadata management, data storage, database management, data security, and data analytics in a quorum setting to manage the agency’s data needs and aid evidence-based decision-making.

Specifically, the Data Governance Board will:

1. Promote data ownership and responsibility for data management at the enterprise, business unit, and system level.
2. Ensure accurate documentation of metadata for all source systems.
3. Create enterprise processes for the governance of data and metadata across NARA.
4. Create business data steward roles and awareness of the critical responsibility these roles hold.
5. Ensure the creation and management of a master dataset to support the core functions of the agency and promote use of this enterprise-level data to reduce duplicate storage.
6. Sustain business unit-level ownership and responsibility for data quality, data processing, data lifecycle, storage, and security of systems/databases.
7. Actively participate in data governance efforts from all areas of NARA (program units, IT, and mission support units such as Finance and Human Capital).
8. Develop and implement the data governance framework and stewardship processes and provide training as needed.

VI. Meetings

The Data Governance Board will meet at the call of the chair but no less than quarterly. Meeting materials will be provided at least 48 hours in advance.

VII. Voting

VIII. Status Reporting

IX. Duration

Charter Filing Date:

The Data Governance Board will become effective upon the Archivist's signature and is in effect until superseded or suspended.

Approval:

DAVID S. FERRIERO Archivist of the United States