How does data governance relate to governance frameworks, and what are its core artifacts?

• A. Data governance handles only data privacy.
• B. Data governance excludes data lineage.
• C. Data governance only concerns data warehousing.
• D. Data governance ensures data quality, stewardship, and compliance within governance; core artifacts include data policy, data stewardship assignments, data lineage, data quality metrics, and data catalog.

Answer: (D)

Data governance is the practice of managing data as a strategic asset within a governance framework, ensuring clear ownership, consistent policies, and controls across the data lifecycle. The best answer captures that scope by stating that data governance ensures data quality, stewardship, and compliance within governance, and by naming tangible artifacts that operationalize these commitments.

The listed artifacts provide concrete mechanisms to make governance real: a data policy sets the rules for how data is handled, who may access it, how it should be retained, and under what conditions it can be used; data stewardship assignments designate the people responsible for overseeing data assets and enforcing standards; data lineage documents where data originates, how it’s transformed, and where it flows, which supports trust, impact analysis, and issue tracing; data quality metrics define what “good data” looks like and enable ongoing monitoring of accuracy, completeness, consistency, and timeliness; and a data catalog acts as a searchable metadata repository that helps users discover data, understand its context, and assess its trustworthiness.

Together, these artifacts anchor accountability, enable regulatory compliance, and support informed decision-making across the organization. The other statements are too narrow—they imply governance focuses only on privacy, or only on lineage, or only on data warehousing—missing the broader scope and the practical artifacts that make governance actionable.