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What is Metadata Management?
Need
to manage metadata management and want practical standards and best
practices for information management governance and accountability?
What
is data management?

Data management is a sub-set of information management that governs
organization and control of the structure and design, storage,
movement, security and quality of information.
What
is metadata?
Metadata
is data describing, or specifying, other data or defining, and organizing,
characteristics that need to be known about data, including (but not
limited to) information about physical data representations, technical
and business processes, rules and constraints, and data
structures.
What
is metadata management?
Sound metadata management practices ensure that information needed to
support management and business intelligence decision making is accurate, accessible, complete, consistent, timely, valid and relevant
and assists in maintaining high integrity over production data.
Metadata management
standards and best practices checklist
The following should be addressed in metadata policy, standards and
best practices.
Meta data checklist
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A metadata policy, standards and best practices should be established.
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| The business owner should
maintain business metadata, including
business
rules, organizational metadata and transformational metadata. |
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Business
metadata should include:
- Who:
- Owns the data i.e. data guardian;
- Maintains the data i.e. data steward;
- What
the data means i.e. entity, attribute
definitions and sample data;
- Where:
- The data comes from i.e. how is it
collected;
- The data is stored i.e. application
system;
- When
data is collected i.e. OLTP, daily feed,
monthly feed; and
- How is it used e.g. management information,
marketing analytics
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| The IT
owner should
maintain application
metadata, including technical and physical metadata. |
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Application data
should include:
- Who:
- Maintains
the application i.e. IT owner;
- Maintains the database i.e. production DBA;
and
- Is responsible for change control
- The data
looks
like e.g. logical/physical
data models;
- The data means e.g. table/column
definitions, and sample data;
- The data profile looks like e.g. for each
table and column, the number of rows, min/max values, distinct values
- Interfaces feed into and feed out of the
application
- Where:
- The data originates from e.g. system of
record
- The data is stored e.g.
- Server
- Database name
- IP address
- The data goes to e.g. downstream
systems/applications
- It is archived including near and off-site
storage
- When
it is updated; backed-up, archived, stored
off-site
- How it is moved between applications e.g.
transfer mechanisms
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| The
business owner of the data that the metadata supports for accuracy,
timeliness, relevancy, consistency and validity should periodically
review metadata |
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| Processes should be established to move data model metadata to the corporate metadata repository
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Metadata should be adequately controlled and
documented in an approved and published metadata repository and metadata back-up/restore procedures should be established
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| Metadata users should be assigned
appropriate access rights and privileges |
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| Processes should be established to move data movement model metadata to the corporate metadata repository |
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| The IT
owner should maintain application
metadata, including technical and physical metadata
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| Metadata should be stored in an approved enterprise metadata repository that
complies with an approved information technology standards list |
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Information management security should include provision for preventing unauthorized access to the metadata repository
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Data quality objectives should be included in metadata repositories.
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Project management framework should specify:
- Metadata tasks and deliverables; and
- A responsible,
approve, consult, inform (RACI) matrix.
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| Accountabilities
for each key role
involved in metadata management should be defined and communicated to all
stakeholders? |
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| Project management plans and project quality management plans should include provision for metadata quality assurance reviews and approvals |
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Processes should be defined to specify how metadata is maintained e.g. additions, deletions and modifications
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Human resources policies should specify that business owners are responsible for maintaining
business metadata, including
business
rules, organizational metadata and transformational metadata, and roles, responsibilities and position descriptions should be clearly defined.
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| The business intelligence framework should includes provision for metadata management standards and best practices.
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The change management methodology and framework should ensure that changes to metadata follow a
documented and approved change management process
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The release management process should include provision for migrating metadata to production.
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Summary...
Metadata
management standards and best practices should be defined to ensure successful implementation of an information
management discipline
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