University Data Governance Committee (UDGC)

Purpose: Set institutional policy, maintain data standards, and oversee governance execution across all domains.

• Chair, Chief Data Officer (CDO)

  • Sponsors governance, leads UDGC meetings, sets strategy (~0.2 FTE)
  • Liaises with executive leadership

• Program Manager / Secretariat

  • Administers governance workflows, scheduling, documentation (~0.5 FTE)

• Domain Representatives (Research, Clinical Ops, Finance, Student Services)

  • Advocate domain priorities, ensure policy alignment downstream (~0.1–0.2 FTE each)

• Campus Privacy Officer (CPO) / Compliance Lead

  • Advises on FERPA, HIPAA, educational privacy risk policies (~0.3 FTE) (YouTube, Wikipedia)

Domain Sub-Committees (Research, Clinical Ops, Finance, Student Services)

Purpose: Customize access workflows, compliance frameworks, and data definitions per domain.

Informatics Platform Engineering Team

Your core group running the platform infrastructure and user support.

• Platform Engineering Lead / Senior Engineer

  • Oversees Azure + Databricks infrastructure, upgrades, runtime maintenance, security patches (1 FTE)

• Access & Compliance Engineer

  • Manages RBAC implementation, access provisioning, audit logging, policy enforcement (1 FTE)

• User Support & Documentation Specialist

  • Creates onboarding materials, runs training sessions, handles user queries (~0.5 FTE)

• Reporting / Audit Automation Engineer

  • Builds dashboards for governance KPIs, automates compliance reports (~0.5 FTE)

Training, Literacy, & Community Support

Purpose: Build data capability across the institution and maintain community-based support.

• Enterprise Data Steward / Instructor

  • Designs training curricula, runs workshops across domains (~0.5 FTE)

• Data Steward Peer Network (cross-domain)

  • Domain-level stewards collaborate for best practices, share updates (~collective >0 FTE)

Key Role Definitions (from external standards)

• Data Steward

  • The business-facing role accountable for data definitions, quality, metadata governance, and fitness for purpose. A steward connects governance policy to team-level usage. (Wikipedia, Wikipedia, Royal Society)

• Data Custodian

  • The technical role responsible for system-level control: data integrity, storage, versioning, access controls, and technical enforcement of governance rules. (Wikipedia)

• Campus Privacy Officer (CPO)

  • Oversees institutional privacy policy compliance (FERPA, HIPAA, learning analytics). Advises domain sub-groups and UDGC on regulatory obligations. (Wikipedia)

• Chief Medical Informatics Officer (CMIO) (if clinical domain includes physician leadership)

  • Provides clinical informatics oversight—particularly needed for clinical operations workflows and governance integration with hospital systems. (Wikipedia)

Summary Table: Heads & Effort Estimate

Adoption Examples from Peer Institutions

• Stanford Medicine’s STARR / SDSR:

  • Utilizes a robust infrastructure for patient record ingestion, self-service analytics tools, and a governance layer that separates self-service from concierge access. Domain stewards and compliance leads are embedded alongside technical operations. (Wikipedia, ResearchGate, ResearchGate)

• Duke University Protected Network:

  • Combines domain-specific isolation via virtual enclaves with centralized platform control. Roles of both stewards and custodians are clearly delineated between business-led governance and technical operations. (arXiv)

Case studies of hospital data governance highlight the importance of a separate clinical data governance role interacting with domain approval workflows while aligning with central architecture. (YouTube)

This structure ensures clarity of responsibilities, compliance alignment, and scalable analytics delivery across a university with a medical center, grounded in proven practices from peer institutions.