Which statement best describes data governance?

• A. It is the sole responsibility of IT to manage data security.
• B. It is the overall management of data availability, usability, integrity, and security within the organization to support decision-making.
• C. It concerns only patient billing data.
• D. It focuses exclusively on archiving old records.

Answer: (B)

Data governance is the organization-wide process of ensuring data is available, usable, reliable, and secure to support informed decision-making. It sets policies, standards, and roles, guides data quality and stewardship, manages the data lifecycle, and enforces privacy and security across all data assets. This broad, cross-functional scope explains why it belongs to the whole organization—not just IT—and why it covers more than a single data domain or a single activity like archiving.

Solely assigning responsibility to IT misses the necessary business ownership and policy direction. Focusing on just one data domain, such as patient billing data, ignores the many other data assets the organization relies on. Limiting governance to archiving ignores the ongoing needs for data quality, accessibility, and security that enable decision-making today.