A Swiss IT service provider company with approximately 250 employees aims to improve data governance in its business with the use of a data asset inventory system. The provided solution aimed to address how a data asset inventory can fulfil data governance needs identified through stakeholder discussions and internal policy review while generating minimal work effort for its population and maintenance.

Information was retrieved through the means of stakeholder discussions and a review of internal policy documents to understand the business context and through a review of literature and industry standards for relevant definitions and understanding of state-of-the-art practices in data governance.

The solution presented in this document provides a model of how the data held and processed by an organisation can be represented in a data asset inventory system by mapping the context in which it is used through a unique combination of data subjects, data type and location. The solution also provides a process through which the system can be populated, alongside consideration of scope, granularity, and ways to measure progress. The solution is designed to be technology-independent and organisation agnostic but also provides considerations on the evaluation of a suitable tool for its implementation. The validation of the proposed solution with a sample set of data governance use cases provided by stakeholders shows that the proposed model can indeed support common data governance needs, but many of them depend on good integration with other data governance systems.