Simplifying Data Governance and Boosting Data Literacy with IBM’s Relationship Explorer
This article has been cowritten with Robert Jackson Jones.
Poor levels of data literacy can hinder an organization’s aspirations of becoming more data-driven. According to Gartner, poor data literacy often leads to decisions based on intuition rather than data.
With increasingly large and complex data estates , data consumers such as business analysts or data scientists often find it increasingly challenging to navigate the complex relationships between assets and business metadata.
This lack of visibility can impede the ability of data stewards to assess the impact of changes in governance artifact assignments on data assets. It can also hinder governance and compliance efforts, making it difficult for compliance officers and data stewards to locate sensitive data and manage governance policies effectively. While existing tools can provide a wealth of information in relation to data assets, they often fall short in providing a comprehensive view of these relationships, leading to inefficiencies and compliance risks.
Relationship Explorer, a new feature of IBM Knowledge Catalog available from June 2024 with version 5.0 of Cloud Pak for Data, utilizes the capabilities of a knowledge graph database to present a visual map that allows data consumers and stewards to easily explore relationships between various data assets and governance artifacts. Governance and compliance officers, along with data stewards, can identify the locations of sensitive data, visualize the flow of business terms, assess the impact of changes in governance artifact assignments, and ensure compliance by visualizing policies, rules, and classifications associated with data assets.
Furthermore, Relationship Explorer assists data consumers in finding the right data for their reporting and data science needs, enabling them to quickly grasp high-level insights into data and relationships for faster decision-making. With fine-grained control over displayed content, comprehensive filters, and multiple entry points for exploration from the appropriate context, Relationship Explorer serves as a unified interface for viewing relationships across all data assets and their metadata, thereby increasing data literacy levels within the organization.
To learn how IBM Knowledge Accelerators development team, the customer zero of Relationship Explorer, are already benefiting from it, read the story at: https://medium.com/@posulliv_87641/some-early-experiences-using-the-new-relationship-explorer-feature-in-ibm-knowledge-catalog-6f7b0f230113 .
For a perspective from the Relationship Explorer development team, read Andrzej Wrobel’s article: https://medium.com/@andrzej.wrobel/understand-end-to-end-data-management-with-relationship-explorer-feature-in-ibm-cloud-pak-for-data-02a2aeb4a443 .
IBM’s Relationship Explorer offers a straightforward solution to complex data governance challenges, helping organizations enhance data literacy and make better-informed decisions.
To learn more about IBM’s Relationship Explorer and its potential to streamline critical use cases, visit https://www.ibm.com/products/knowledge-catalog.
Watch Relationship Explorer in action by joining us for the IBM webinar on June 20, 2024. Register now using this link*.
* Recording should be available at the same url soon after the live event.
