TOOLS, TEMPLATES & FIELD NOTES

Practical resources. Open by design.

Use the tools and templates without an email gate. When you need help implementing them, that is where the consulting work begins.

An engraved catalogue, source layers and magnifier; a metaphor for knowing what information exists.
CONCEPTUAL ENGRAVING / DATAGOVERNANCE.CA
18 QUESTIONS · BROWSER-LOCAL

Readiness assessment

Explore six dimensions, preserve unknowns and download a prioritised planning report.

Run the assessment
EDITABLE CSV FILES

Working templates

Start a register, decision log, rule catalogue or vendor review without buying a platform.

Browse templates
PLANNING TOOL

Cost of data rework

Model the capacity consumed by repeat data correction using your own assumptions.

Use the estimator
LOCAL-ONLY WORKSHEET

Governance charter builder

Create a first-draft charter for one data domain, with your own scope and decision roles.

Build a draft charter
PRIMARY REFERENCES

Source & framework library

Official context, review dates and clear distinctions between guidance and assurance.

Review the sources
ORIGINAL IMPLEMENTATION GUIDES

Read the field notes.

IMPLEMENTATION

Your first 90 days of data governance

Start with one business decision. Build the smallest working system around it. Expand only after the first cycle teaches you something.

Read the field note
ACCOUNTABILITY

Owner, steward or custodian: who decides?

The point of a role model is not to invent more titles. It is to stop important questions disappearing between business and technical teams.

Read the field note
AI FOUNDATIONS

AI-ready data is more than clean data

A tidy document collection can still be the wrong collection for an AI system to use.

Read the field note
THIRD-PARTY REVIEW

Before the vendor demo becomes your data decision

A clear use-case worksheet makes a vendor review more useful than a generic yes/no security questionnaire.

Read the field note
DATA QUALITY

A quality score needs a denominator

“Our data is 98% accurate” is not a useful management statement unless someone can explain what was tested.

Read the field note
PRIVACY OPERATIONS

A privacy policy is not the operating process

Translate an approved requirement into a trigger, an owner, a system action and evidence that the action happened.

Read the field note
An engraved catalogue, source layers and magnifier; a metaphor for knowing what information exists.
NEW / THE VISUAL FIELDGUIDE

Make the complex
easier to explain.

Ownership, lineage, quality and lifecycle—made concrete through twelve visual explanations, practical questions and connected service scopes.

Explore the visual fieldguide
START WITH A CONVERSATION

Make your next data decision a clearer one.

Tell us what is not working. We will discuss a sensible starting scope.

FROM THE WORKING DESK

Good governance.
In everyday practice.

Practical field notes for the decisions between the strategy and the finished process.

BUSINESS CASE

Make the business case without inventing the return.

Start with an observable operational problem. Separate the cost of repeated work from the cash your organisation could actually save.

Read the field note
DEFINITIONS

One metric. One meaning. A useful glossary workshop.

A glossary becomes useful when it resolves a real disagreement and connects the agreed meaning to the calculation, owner and permitted use.

Read the field note
CHANGE CONTROL

A small data change can have a long shadow.

Renamed fields, revised definitions and access changes need an understandable route from request to impact review, approval, testing and handoff.

Read the field note
OPERATING RHYTHM

A governance meeting should finish with decisions.

Build a review rhythm around exceptions, unresolved questions and evidence of how the process is working—not a growing collection of status slides.

Read the field note
A SMALLER, CLEARER FIRST STEP

Bring a problem.
Leave with a brief.

Choose one decision, name the people involved and set an evidence boundary before anyone asks for your data.

Prepare your project brief
01

Choose the decision

Name the report, workflow or use case that needs to work better.

02

Set the boundary

Identify the owner, allowed evidence and important exclusions.

03

Define useful completion

Agree what a colleague should be able to repeat or verify.