Manage initiatives in Semarchy xDG

Overview

An initiative in Semarchy xDG refers to a specific project or effort undertaken by an organization to address various aspects of data management, quality, compliance, or analytics.

Initiatives are typically driven by the need to improve the way data is handled within the organization to achieve specific goals or outcomes. Data initiatives are a fundamental component of a comprehensive data governance program.

Data initiatives play a critical role in helping organizations leverage their data assets more effectively, reduce risks associated with data misuse or poor quality, and align data practices with organizational goals and compliance requirements.

Examples

Here are some common types of initiatives within data governance:

  • Data Quality: This focuses on improving the accuracy, consistency, and reliability of data. It may involve data cleansing, validation, and the establishment of data quality standards.

  • Data Security and Privacy: This initiative aims to ensure that data is adequately protected from unauthorized access, breaches, and compliance with data privacy regulations like GDPR or HIPAA.

  • Territory Charting: A project that involves mapping and categorizing data assets within defined regions or boundaries to ensure effective data governance and compliance.

  • Data Migration: A planned project to transfer data from one system or format to another for operational or strategic reasons.

  • Data Integration Migration: A planned project that involves transferring data pipelines, processes, and workflows from one system to another for data integration and transformation.

  • Data Catalog and Metadata: Organizations often initiate efforts to build and maintain a data catalog and associated metadata to improve data discoverability, lineage tracking, and understanding.

  • Data Compliance: This involves ensuring that data practices align with relevant industry regulations and standards, such as ensuring compliance with data protection laws or industry-specific data requirements.

  • Master Data Management (MDM): MDM initiatives focus on creating and maintaining a single, consistent, and authoritative source of master data across the organization, such as customer or product data.

  • Data Analytics and Business Intelligence: Organizations may undertake projects to enhance their data analytics capabilities, enabling better decision-making through data-driven insights.

  • Data Governance Framework: Establishing a formal data governance framework, including roles, responsibilities, and processes, is often a significant initiative to ensure effective data management.

  • Data Documentation and Data Stewardship: This initiative involves creating and maintaining documentation for data assets and assigning data stewards responsible for data quality and governance.

  • Data Culture and Training: Promoting a data-driven culture within the organization often requires training and awareness programs to educate employees about data governance principles and best practices.

Browse initiatives

In Semarchy xDG, initiatives are initiated in and belong to a domain.

Initiatives are organized as a hierarchy under the domain. Initiatives can contain other initiatives (called sub-inititives), and so forth.

To browse an initiative:

  1. Select Domains & Initiatives in the navigation drawer.

  2. Click the domain containing the initiative to open it.

  3. Select the Initiatives tab.

  4. Click an initiative to open it. You can browse its sub-initiatives in the Sub-initiative tab.

The initiative page displays the information contained in xDG for this initiative.

This information is organized into tabs:

  • General shows the initiative documentation and organization, including its domain, parent initiative (if any), badges, owners, tags, and related glossary terms, as applicable.

  • Sub-initiatives show the child initiatives of the initiative.

  • Assets shows the assets attached to this initiative.

  • Properties shows the properties of the initiative.

  • Metrics shows the historized metrics captured for this initiative.

Create an initiative

To create an initiative:

  1. Navigate to the domain’s Initiatives or to the initiative’s Sub-initiatives tab.

  2. Click the Add icon New button.
    The Create new initiative/Create new sub-initiative dialog opens.

  3. In the Name field, enter the new initiative name.

  4. (Optional) In the Description field, enter the initiative’s description.

  5. (Optional) In the Initiative ID field, enter a unique initiative ID. If you leave this field empty, a random UUID will be generated as the initiative ID. This ID is used to uniquely identify the initiative and locate it using the initiative URN.

  6. Click Create.

The Initiative ID cannot be modified after creation.

Edit an initiative

In the initiative General tab, you can change the initiative organizational attributes, including domain, parent initiative, owners, tags, and business terms.

Setting these attributes is similar to the operation you can perform on assets.

Add assets and sub-initiatives

You can add assets and initiatives to an initiative by editing them.

Delete an initiative

To delete an initiative:

  1. Navigate to the domain’s Initiatives or to the initiative’s Sub-initiatives tab.

  2. Select the initiative in the list of initiatives.

  3. In the editor toolbar, click Delete icon Delete

When you delete an initiative, you can reassign its assets and sub-initiatives to another initiative.