Decentralized Data Governance as Part of a Data Mesh Platform: Concepts and Approaches

TL;DR

This paper explores how decentralized data governance can be integrated into data mesh platforms, offering a conceptual model and practical insights from real-world implementation to guide future development.

Contribution

It presents a novel conceptual model for data mesh governance and discusses approaches to platform-driven governance based on practical implementation experiences.

Findings

A conceptual model for data mesh governance

Different approaches to platform-driven governance

Implementation insights from a real-world data mesh platform

Abstract

Data mesh is a socio-technical approach to decentralized analytics data management. To manage this decentralization efficiently, data mesh relies on automation provided by a self-service data infrastructure platform. A key aspect of this platform is to enable decentralized data governance. Because data mesh is a young approach, there is a lack of coherence in how data mesh concepts are interpreted in the industry, and almost no work on how a data mesh platform facilitates governance. This paper presents a conceptual model of key data mesh concepts and discusses different approaches to drive governance through platform means. The insights presented are drawn from concrete experiences of implementing a fully-functional data mesh platform that can be used as a reference on how to approach data mesh platform development.