An investigation into the role of data governance in improving data quality : a case study of the Omani banking sector

In the era of big data analytics, data is widely recognised as a valuable asset that can enable organisations to achieve their strategic objectives. Despite that, banks are still struggling to maintain high-quality data. Prior studies show that a data governance programme can play a critical role in improving data quality. It can provide data quality professionals with a holistic approach to formally define policies, procedures and decision rights required for managing data quality in a more systematic manner. However, few empirical studies were conducted in this area. Therefore, the present paper aims to close this gap by investigating the data quality problem in the Omani banking industry to understand how various data governance mechanisms can address this issue. The study adopted a qualitative case study with semi-structured interviews and document reviews being used to collect data. A theoretical framework by Abraham et al. (2019) was adopted to guide the collection and analysis of the data. A thematic analysis (TA) by Braun and Clark was followed for data analysis. Findings of the study suggest that the data governance mechanisms, namely ‘performance measurement’, ‘compliance monitoring’ and ‘training’, have positively contributed to mitigating data quality issues in the Omani banking sector.