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The National Academies

NCHRP 23-23 [Active]

Data Governance Design and Implementation — Links Between Governance Approaches and Performance Effects in DOTs

  Project Data
Funds: $350,000
Staff Responsibility: Sid Mohan
Research Agency: Spy Pond Partners, LLC
Principal Investigator: Frances Harrison
Effective Date: 7/25/2022
Completion Date: 7/24/2024

BACKGROUND

NCHRP Report 666: Target-Setting Methods and Data Management to Support Performance-Based Resource Allocation by Transportation Agencies, Volume I: Research Report defines data governance as “the execution and enforcement of authority over the management of data assets and the performance of data functions.” The design and implementation of data governance approaches, optimized for different transportation organizations and business units within a transportation organization, is a recognized challenge. Experience with data governance approaches is also varied among state departments of transportation (DOTs), and there is an ongoing need for greater understanding of the most effective approaches and for improvements to those approaches as feasible.

Previous efforts have been carried out at various levels to explore different data governance strategies with different outcomes. NCHRP Report 754: Improving Management of Transportation Information covered subject areas such as open data and metadata standards, and presented case studies from DOTs around the United States. Even though this is a comprehensive study, it did not provide a structured approach for DOT-wide data governance of geographic information systems (GIS) and other related data. NCHRP Synthesis 508: Data Management and Governance Practices developed a collection of transportation agency data management practices and experiences. The report demonstrated how agencies access, manage, use, and share data. More recent case studies were presented in the Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA) Data Governance & Data Management: Case Studies of Select Transportation Agencies. This report discovered that many of the agencies surveyed did not have official data management or data governance policies. They also presented lessons learned and challenges in this report.

OBJECTIVE

NCHRP has identified a research team to develop tools and resources to facilitate the understanding of data governance within state DOTs, and for the specifics of data governance implementation. This objective will be met by: 

a. Defining data governance as it relates to the needs of DOTs;
b. Evaluating current data governance approaches within DOTs and identifying effective practices, lessons learned, and critical components of successful data governance;
c. Developing an agile data governance approach framework;
d. Identifying and developing effective implementation strategies for comprehensive data governance across diverse DOT organizations; and
e. Developing tools to communicate data governance to different internal and external stakeholders at DOTs.

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