Data governance has become foundational to how organizations create public value, manage risk, and deploy AI responsibly. As data becomes embedded across more organizational functions – and as AI expands how data can be combined, analyzed, and acted upon – the question is no longer whether organizations need data governance, but whether their governance arrangements are fit for purpose.

Are responsibilities and decision rights clear? Do the right people have the authority and capabilities they need? Can data be accessed, shared, and reused responsibly? Are governance arrangements aligned with organizational priorities and the needs of the people affected by data use?

Answering these questions is harder than it sounds.

To help organizations do so systematically, we developed the Data Governance Self Assessment, an interactive tool that helps organizations examine the maturity of their data governance practices, identify gaps, and set priorities for action. It translates the UNESCO Data Governance Toolkit: Navigating Data in the Digital Age into an operational diagnostic that organizations can use in their own context.

Putting Principles into Practice

The self-assessment includes 56 questions across four interconnected dimensions of data governance: 

• Purpose: Clarifying the strategic objectives of data governance and the public value it should support.

• Principles: Considering safeguards and commitments such as human rights, fairness, transparency, accountability, security and trust.

• People: Identifying the institutions, stakeholders, roles, capabilities and coordination needed for implementation.

• Practices: Examining operational arrangements across the data lifecycle, including data quality, access, sharing, reuse and responsible AI use.

Together, they prompt organizations to examine issues ranging from strategic purpose and governance principles to institutional roles, data quality, access and reuse, safeguards, capabilities, and mechanisms for adapting governance as technologies and needs change.

For each question, users can indicate whether a practice is in place, partly in place, or whether more information is needed. They can also indicate how important the issue is to their organization and record notes and context along the way. Responses are not stored by The GovLab or transmitted to a central database; the information entered remains local to the user’s browser. The Assessment also works offline and can be installed on a device, so it remains usable in settings where connectivity is limited or intermittent. It is available in the six official languages of the United Nations. 

Upon completion of the Assessment, users receive an evaluation of their current data governance practices, including an overall score and a breakdown across the four dimensions. More importantly, the results help users distinguish practices that are already established, high-priority gaps that require attention, practices that are partly in place and need strengthening, and areas where further investigation is needed.

A tool for organizational dialogue

The Assessment can be completed by an individual, but its value can be even greater when used collectively. Senior leaders, data stewards, legal teams, technologists, policy teams, and program managers may have very different understandings of how data is governed within the same organization. Those differences are themselves useful information. Comparing perspectives can reveal responsibilities that are unclear, practices that exist but are not widely understood, institutional bottlenecks, or areas where formal principles are not yet translated into day-to-day practice.

Used in this way, the Assessment can offer more than a simple diagnostic. It can also provide a starting point for dialogue about where an organization is today, what matters most, and what should happen next. 

The Assessment forms part of a broader ecosystem of guidance, capacity development and multistakeholder collaboration that aims to help translate responsible data governance principles into context-appropriate action in the digital and AI era. 

Take the Data Governance Self Assessment: https://datagov.opendatapolicylab.org/

Further resources:

• The Data Governance Toolkit: Data Governance Toolkit: Navigating Data in the Digital Age

• Data Goverance FAQ: Data Governance Without the Jargon: 30 Questions and Answers to Clarify Terms and Trends 

• Data Governance innovations: How Data Governance Is Evolving: Mapping Innovations Across the Data Lifecycle 

Explore:

• Explore the Data Stewards Academy and Network

• Explore the UNESCO Data Governance in the Digital Age program

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