Platform · Governance

Governance.understandData Governance & Stewardship

Not all data deserves the same scrutiny. This module finds the fields your regulatory reports and material decisions actually ride on, and puts the full weight of governance on exactly those.

The product, at a glance

What Governance is made of.

6 capabilities, and the part of the mechanism this product carries. Every box opens right here, with its full story one tap deeper.

tap any box, or any circle in the mechanism, and it answers right hereknow what matters

What changes

What changes when this is running.

Not promises of speed, but mechanisms: each of these happens because of how the product works, not because we say so.

Governance effort lands where it matters, because critical elements are discovered from actual report usage, not nominated by committee.

The CDE list stays current, because the registry sits on the same governed graph as the evidence beneath it.

Accountability stops lapsing quietly, because attestations expire on schedule and a lapsed one shows as lapsed, never green.

who lives hereData stewardsCDE ownersSecond line riskChief data officeanswers toBCBS 239

The product

Govern the right data. The right way. Everywhere.

Policies, ownership, stewardship, standards and workflows, orchestrated as one operating model. So data is trusted, decisions are accountable, and the regulatory answer is ready before it is asked.

Trust and Scale

Business outcomes

Stronger data trust

Regulatory confidence

Lower risk and fewer incidents

Higher data quality

Better decisions, faster

Reduced cost of governance

A scalable operating model

At a glance

Governance defines the rules of the game, who is accountable, and how the work actually gets done, consistently and at scale.

Define

Establish policies, standards, roles, ownership and RACI.

Guide

Provide the guardrails, workflows and practices people follow.

Operate

Drive stewardship execution through tasks, approvals and attestations.

Assure

Monitor compliance, controls and governance effectiveness.

Evolve

Continuously improve the policies, standards and operating model.

Trigger events

When an institution reaches for this.

A policy that exists in a document and is enforced nowhereAn examiner asking who owns a number, and three teams pointing at each otherAttestations chased by email every quarterAn issue raised, assigned, and then quietly forgottenA governance programme measured by how many meetings it held

What it does

Seven stages from writing the rules to improving them, with the work in between actually tracked.

01 · Define and planSet the strategy, policies, standards, domains and operating model.

Governance strategy
Policy hierarchy
Principles and standards
Governance domains

Hover, click or use the arrow keys to walk the lifecycle.

The governance health scorecard

Governance measured by whether the work happened, not by how many meetings were held. Each dimension is computed from tasks, attestations and control results the platform already holds.

of 100 · Strong

Trust by business process

Hover a dimension to see what it measures, or a cell to read the process behind it.

Governance health by dimension

Policy compliance94
Stewardship91
Data quality88
Attestation96
Issue management85
Control effectiveness90

Strong · 80 to 100Moderate · 60 to 79Weak · 0 to 59

Governance domains under management

Customer 18%Financial reporting 16%Risk and compliance 15%Reference and master 14%Product 12%Regulatory reporting 11%Third-party 8%AI and model 6%

An illustrative scorecard for ABC Bank, the site's standing fictional institution. The shape is real; the numbers in your estate are your own.

Who is accountable for what

A RACI that is enforced rather than filed. Every activity has exactly one accountable party, which is the rule most governance documents quietly break, and the platform will not let you save one that does.

RACIData ownerData stewardData analystData engineerGovernance office

Define a policy or standard

data owner A · data steward R · data analyst C · data engineer C · governance office I

R responsible, A accountable, C consulted, I informed. One A per row is the invariant: accountability that is shared is accountability that is absent.

One policy, from draft to evidence

What actually happens to a policy after it is written. Most governance programmes stop at 'published'; the links after that are the ones an examiner asks about.

01 · Policy draftedA person decides

Authored against the hierarchy, with its standard and scope attached.

A chain is a conjunction. Take one link out and see what is left.

Platform
AI-assisted
A person decides

The loop closes: what monitoring finds feeds back into the policy, so the standard is corrected rather than merely re-communicated.

Key capabilities

Governance strategy and framework

Governance strategy
Policy hierarchy
Principles and standards
Operating model
Governance domains
Maturity assessment
Roadmap and priorities

Policy and standard management

Policy library
Standard definition
Policy authoring studio
Versioning and lifecycle
Policy approvals
Policy communication
Policy exceptions

Ownership and roles

Data owner management
Steward assignment
RACI matrix
Role definitions
Delegation and backup
Organisational mapping
Ownership catalog

Workflow and task management

Workflow designer
Task management
Approvals and routing
Escalations and reminders
SLAs and due dates
Bulk actions
My work and dashboards

Issue and exception management

Issue logging
Categorisation and severity
Assignment and triage
Root cause analysis
Remediation plans
Exception and waiver management
Closure and verification

Stewardship and collaboration

Stewardship dashboard
Data change requests
Collaboration hub
Comments and discussions
Notifications
Knowledge base
Community and Q&A

Monitoring and assurance

Compliance monitoring
Control effectiveness
Attestation tracking
Governance KPIs
Data quality summary
Policy violation monitor
Risk indicators

Reporting and communication

Governance reports
Scorecards and KPIs
Management dashboards
Executive cockpit
Regulatory dashboards
Scheduled reports
Data stories and insights

Where the platform proposes

AI-powered, and every one of them a recommendation rather than a decision.

Suggest owners and stewards from observed usage

Draft a policy from the standard it implements

Route an issue to the person most likely to resolve it

Flag a policy nobody is complying with

Predict which attestations will miss their date

Surface the control whose effectiveness is slipping

Manual and AI-assisted

The same work, split. Everything on the left is something a person does; everything on the right is something the platform proposes, with evidence, for a person to accept. Nothing crosses the line on its own.

Manual

A person does this.

Set the strategy and the operating model
Write and approve the policies and standards
Accept accountability for a domain
Decide an exception or a waiver
Attest that a control holds
Judge whether the programme is working

AI-assisted

The platform proposes. A person accepts.

Suggest owners and stewards from usage
Draft policy text against a standard
Route and triage issues
Detect non-compliance and policy drift
Predict missed attestations
Assemble the governance reporting

Governance principles

The six

Accountability is clear
Transparency is the default
Policies are practical
Data is stewarded
Evidence is required
Improvement is continuous

Common use cases

Where institutions start

Establish a data governance framework and policies
Assign data owners and stewards
Manage policies, standards and exceptions
Drive stewardship tasks and approvals
Monitor compliance and control effectiveness
Track attestations and certifications
Manage issues, risks and remediation
Produce governance reports and scorecards
Communicate governance across the enterprise

End-to-end workflow

01Define
02Assign
03Execute
04Monitor
05Attest
06Report
07Improve

What gets measured

Against your own baseline.

Governance effectiveness scorePolicy compliance rateSteward tasks on timeAttestation completionIssue resolution timeOpen governance issuesSteward satisfaction

Who it is for

Data owners and stewardsGovernance councilsThe data governance officeRisk, compliance and legalData architects and engineersBusiness usersInternal audit

Integrations

OntaVera CatalogOntaVera QualityOntaVera LineageOntaVera PrivacyOntaVera RegulatoryOntaVera Reference DataOntaVera AI GovernanceOntaVera Trust IntelligenceIdentity and access, separation of dutiesRisk and control managementServiceNow, JiraMicrosoft Teams, SlackEnterprise applicationsAPIs and connectors

Built on the OntaVera platform

Shared by every product in the suite.

Financial ontology and knowledge graph

Metadata fabric and connectors

Policy and rules engine

Workflow and approvals

Security and access: RBAC, ABAC

Audit and evidence, immutable

APIs and events: REST, GraphQL

Why OntaVera

An enterprise framework aligned to SOX, BCBS 239, GDPR and PIPEDA
Governance operationalised through workflows and role-based experiences
One source of truth for policies, ownership, tasks, attestations and evidence
Real-time monitoring, with insight and recommendations attached
Built to scale across domains, geographies and business units

Strong governance.Trusted data.Confident decisions.Proven compliance.

Worked example

The digital chain of accountability

A solid line is a relationship a steward accepted. A dashed line is one intelligence proposed and nobody has validated yet. The difference is the product.

Try it yourself

See Governance do real work.

Certification here is derived, never set. Toggle the evidence behind a CDE and watch the badge respond on its own.

setting the stage…

Inside Governance6 sub-modules

Keeping a CDE inventory complete is genuinely hard, because criticality lives in the code that feeds your reports. Here, candidate critical data elements are surfaced from evidence: the platform sees which fields actually feed your regulatory reports and material calculations, and it scores each one on how much rides on it. Your stewards make the final call on every promotion.

What you get

Candidate CDEs are surfaced from lineage: every field that feeds a regulatory report or a material model appears as a candidate, including fields no team has nominated yet.

Each candidate carries an evidence-backed criticality score covering which reports consume it, how many downstream calculations touch it, and where it sits in the flow.

Your existing CDE lists are imported as claims and checked against what the evidence shows, and both gaps and overreach are flagged for a decision.

A person decides every promotion: agents propose candidates, your stewards confirm or reject them, and each call is sealed on the ledger.

Fields the evidence says are critical but no one has yet nominated are brought forward early, so they enter the inventory before an examiner is the first to ask about them.

Every score is traceable to its inputs, so you can show an examiner why a field made the list and why a neighboring field did not.

How it works

Discover

Connectors read metadata from the systems behind your reports, and lineage identifies every field that feeds a regulatory report or material calculation. Only metadata is read, and nothing is copied.

Score

Each candidate is scored from the evidence: the reports that consume it, the reach of its downstream dependents, and the materiality of the use.

Review

Stewards confirm or reject each candidate through the decision door. The platform proposes, and a person decides.

Seal

Every promotion decision is sealed on the hash-chained ledger with the evidence that supported it.

Questions buyers ask

Asked about Governance

5 questions

You keep it, at least at first. Your existing lists come in as claims and are reconciled against what the lineage evidence actually shows, with every gap or overreach flagged for a steward to decide. The difference is that this registry stays current because it sits on the same governed graph as the evidence, while a spreadsheet starts going stale the day it is circulated.

Registry & tiering →

It needs read access to metadata in the systems behind the reports you care about. The connectors read metadata only, so your rows stay where they are, and you can start with one priority report and its source systems and widen from there, which means the first useful candidate list does not wait on a bank-wide integration program.

How connectors work →

Your stewards make the promotion calls, your element owners attest on a cadence set by tier, and your second line signs off on the tiering criteria. The platform handles discovery, scoring, and evidence assembly, so steward time goes into decisions rather than list maintenance. The CDO watches one live coverage view instead of chasing status updates.

Ownership & attestation →

Agents discover candidate elements, score them with evidence, attach impact analysis to proposed changes, and keep declared mappings reconciled against what the evidence shows. They cannot promote a CDE, approve a change, or sign an attestation, because each of those is a human decision sealed on the ledger. If you can point at a governance outcome here, a named person made it.

Change control →

You export the registry of record with tiers, owners, and attestation status, plus an evidence pack per report showing every CDE it stands on and the lineage behind each link. Behind all of that sits the sealed decision record, so any question about who decided and on what basis has a direct answer.

BCBS 239 & report mapping →

Stronger together

One shared record, so products compound.

Every product you add makes this one smarter, because they read and write the same governed record. Start where it hurts most; nothing you adopt later starts from zero.

Governance + Lineage

Add lineage and every CDE shows the parsed path from source column to report line.

Governance + Quality

Add quality and your most material elements get monitored hardest, with incidents routed to their named owners.

Getting started

Start small, and prove it on your own systems.

Most banks start with one priority report and five source systems, live in 90 days, then bring in more of the platform behind exit gates they approve. Governance is part of that first conversation.

Keep exploring

← Catalogavailable now Lineage →available now The engines underneatharchitecture How decisions workframework

The next step

Start with proof, not a promise.

There are three ways in, and each one earns the next. You approve the exit criteria before we spend any more of your time or budget.

A 60-minute working session

Bring one report that is expensive to prove. We walk the mechanism against it. Nothing is required from your side.

A two-week guided sandbox

Your team works hands-on against a synthetic sample bank. It requires zero access to your systems and zero procurement.

A six-week proof on your systems

We use read-only metadata across five systems and one priority report, scored against criteria both sides sign first. The decision it produces is yours.

Book a working session See the adoption path