Data governance
The policies, roles, and processes an organization uses to decide who owns its data, who may change it, and what standard it must meet.
Governance decides the questions that cleaning keeps running into, such as which system wins when two disagree. Without those decisions, each cleanup answers them differently.
See also
- Data stewardThe person responsible for the quality and correct use of a particular set of data, such as the customer list or the product catalog.
- Data qualityHow well a dataset serves the purpose it is used for. Usually judged by accuracy, completeness, consistency, validity, uniqueness, and timeliness.
- Source of truthThe one system or dataset agreed to hold the authoritative version of a piece of information. When copies disagree, it is the one that is taken to be right.