While this resource is not designed specifically for cross-sector collaborations, it provides a
comprehensive checklist to assist organizations with establishing and maintaining data governance
programs and provides considerations that may be helpful for collaborations, such as assigning decision-
making authority over data, conducting data inventories, generating policies and procedures, and more.

“The purpose of this checklist is to assist stakeholder organizations, such as state and local educational
agencies, with establishing and maintaining a successful data governance program to help ensure the
individual privacy and confidentiality of education records. Data governance can be defined as an organizational approach to data and information management that is formalized as a set of policies and
procedures that encompass the full life cycle of data, from acquisition to use to disposal. This includes
establishing decision-making authority, policies, procedures, and standards regarding data security and
privacy protection, data inventories, content and records management, data quality control, data access,
data security and risk management, data sharing and dissemination, as well as ongoing compliance
monitoring of all the above-mentioned activities. Specific best practice action items about the key data
privacy and security components of a data governance program are summarized below.”