CDS Data Governance & Stewardship Principles 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: A data steward discovers that two business units use different definitions for 'active customer.' What governance artifact should be created first?
- A data quality scorecard
- A business glossary entry with an agreed canonical definition (Correct answer)
- A data lineage diagram
- A data retention policy
Correct answer: A business glossary entry with an agreed canonical definition
A business glossary entry establishes the authoritative definition that resolves conflicting terminology across business units.
Question 2: Under DAMA-DMBOK, which role is primarily accountable for the quality of data within a specific business domain?
- Chief Data Officer
- Data Architect
- Business Data Owner (Correct answer)
- IT Database Administrator
Correct answer: Business Data Owner
The Business Data Owner is accountable for data quality, access decisions, and policy compliance within their domain.
Question 3: A company wants to ensure that data governance policies are consistently applied across cloud, on-premises, and hybrid environments. This is best described as:
- Data federation
- Data mesh architecture
- Federated governance (Correct answer)
- Unified data catalog management
Correct answer: Federated governance
Federated governance distributes governance authority while maintaining consistent enterprise policies across diverse environments.
Question 4: Which governance principle states that data should be collected only for specified, explicit, and legitimate purposes?
- Data minimization
- Purpose limitation (Correct answer)
- Storage limitation
- Integrity and confidentiality
Correct answer: Purpose limitation
Purpose limitation, a core GDPR and data governance principle, restricts data use to the purposes declared at collection.
Question 5: A data governance council is evaluating a new initiative. Which metric best demonstrates the business value of data governance to executive stakeholders?
- Number of data dictionaries published
- Reduction in revenue lost due to data errors (Correct answer)
- Count of data stewards trained
- Number of governance policies approved
Correct answer: Reduction in revenue lost due to data errors
Financial impact metrics like revenue loss reduction directly link governance investments to business outcomes executives care about.
Question 6: In data governance, a 'RACI matrix' is used primarily to:
- Rank data assets by business criticality
- Define roles and responsibilities for governance tasks (Correct answer)
- Assess data quality across domains
- Map data flows between systems
Correct answer: Define roles and responsibilities for governance tasks
A RACI matrix clarifies who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed for each governance task or decision.
Question 7: When implementing a data governance program in a highly decentralized organization, which approach is most appropriate?
- Centralized command-and-control model enforced by IT
- Federated model with enterprise standards and domain autonomy (Correct answer)
- No governance — decentralization precludes it
- Outsourcing governance to a third-party vendor
Correct answer: Federated model with enterprise standards and domain autonomy
A federated model balances local domain autonomy with enterprise-wide standards, making it suitable for decentralized organizations.
CDS Data Governance & Stewardship Principles 2
A data steward discovers that two business units use different definitions for 'active customer.' What governance artifact should be created first?