HI520 Unit 9 Data Governance Memo Example

Course	HI520 Database Design and SQL
Unit	Unit 9
Paper type	Data governance memo
Length	About 870 words, 6 pages double-spaced
Format	APA 7 student paper
School	Purdue University Global
Program	MS in Health Informatics
Updated	October 2026

Free sample paper for HI520 Unit 9

Who May Change What a Field Means: A Unit 9 Data Governance Memo Assigning Twelve Fields to Named Roles and Tracing One Change From Request to Data Dictionary

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

HI520: Database Design and SQL

Unit 9 Data Governance Memo

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

Calder Bay Pediatrics, its committee and its fields are composite; the regulation and sources cited are real.

What this part is doingPutting the decision the committee must make on the first page follows memo convention and lets a governance reader act before reading the evidence.

Memo

To: Chair, Data Committee, Calder Bay Pediatrics From: Data Analyst, Quality and Informatics Re: Field ownership and a change process for the asthma database

Decision Requested

Approve the stewardship table below and the five-step change process, effective at the next committee meeting, and approve the first change processed under it: splitting the visit type value telehealth into telehealth audio and telehealth video.

The Problem

The asthma database now supports the dashboard, the quality measures and reports to the community advisory board. Nobody has written down who may change what a field means. In the past quarter, two changes happened without any decision: a front desk lead added the visit type value "school form" to the registration list, and a report writer began treating a blank control score as zero in one report. Each change was reasonable to the person who made it, and each broke a report someone else relied on. Data governance exists to prevent exactly this drift by separating the people who decide what data mean from those who maintain it and those who use it (Rosenbaum, 2010).

Three Duties

Each field has three duties, and the memo assigns each to a role rather than to a person so the table survives staff turnover.

1. Business owner: defines what the field means and which values it may hold.

2. Technical custodian: maintains the field in the database, enforces its constraints and changes its structure.

3. Approver of changes: the role that must agree before a definition or value list changes, usually the business owner, and for fields used in external reporting, the committee itself.

Merging the three duties is how definitions drift: when whoever can change a field may also decide what it means, nobody has actually decided.

Stewardship Table

1. Medical record number. Owner: patient access director. Custodian: database administrator. Approver: committee.

2. Birth date. Owner: patient access director. Custodian: database administrator. Approver: patient access director.

3. Sex. Owner: patient access director. Custodian: database administrator. Approver: committee.

4. Primary language. Owner: patient access director. Custodian: database administrator. Approver: patient access director.

5. Site. Owner: practice administrator. Custodian: database administrator. Approver: practice administrator.

6. Provider identifier. Owner: credentialing coordinator. Custodian: database administrator. Approver: credentialing coordinator.

7. Visit type. Owner: patient access director. Custodian: database administrator. Approver: committee.

8. Diagnosis code. Owner: health information management manager. Custodian: database administrator. Approver: health information management manager.

9. Control score. Owner: medical director for quality. Custodian: database administrator. Approver: committee.

10. Test code. Owner: laboratory lead. Custodian: database administrator. Approver: laboratory lead.

11. Order status. Owner: clinical informatics lead. Custodian: database administrator. Approver: clinical informatics lead.

12. Result value and units. Owner: laboratory lead. Custodian: database administrator. Approver: committee.

Fields marked with the committee as approver are those used in external reports or quality measures, where a change in meaning would change a published number.

What this part is doingReserving committee approval for fields in external reporting keeps governance from slowing every small change while protecting the numbers others rely on.

The Change Process, Followed Once

Step 1, request. The medical director for quality asked that telehealth visits be split into audio-only and video, because the practice's asthma control score is being collected less often on audio-only calls, and because federal telehealth rules treat audio-only services differently from video for some purposes (42 C.F.R. § 410.78). Step 2, owner review. The patient access director, as business owner of visit type, drafted two new values with definitions: telehealth audio, a scheduled visit conducted by telephone with no video; telehealth video, a scheduled visit with live two-way video. The old value telehealth would be retired, not deleted. Step 3, impact review. The data analyst listed every report, query and screen that read visit type. Four reports filter on the old value and would return no rows after the change unless updated; the dashboard groups by visit type and would show three categories for a transition month. Step 4, approval. Because visit type is used in an external quality report, the committee approved the change at its monthly meeting, with an effective date of the first of the following month. Step 5, record. The database administrator added the two values to the allowed list, kept historical rows as telehealth, and recorded the change in the data dictionary: the date, the old and new definitions, the approver and the four reports updated. Reports covering periods that cross the effective date now note the change in a footer.

What this part is doingWalking one real change through all five steps shows the grader that the process works in practice, not only on paper.

Why This Matters

Without the process, the change would have been made by whoever edits the registration list, the four reports would have silently dropped telehealth visits and the quality team would have discovered the problem only when a quarterly number fell. Data that look unchanged but mean something different from one period to the next are among the hardest quality problems to detect (Weiskopf & Weng, 2013). A data dictionary that records when a meaning changed lets every later reader interpret the numbers correctly.

References

42 C.F.R. § 410.78 (2024). https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-42/section-410.78

Rosenbaum, S. (2010). Data governance and stewardship: Designing data stewardship entities and advancing data access. Health Services Research, 45(5p2), 1442-1455. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-6773.2010.01140.x

Weiskopf, N. G., & Weng, C. (2013). Methods and dimensions of electronic health record data quality assessment: Enabling reuse for clinical research. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 20(1), 144-151. https://doi.org/10.1136/amiajnl-2011-000681

Reading the HI 520 Unit 9 instructions

The ninth unit generally asks for a memo proposing data governance for the database you have built, addressed to a committee or leader. Expect to explain the problem governance solves, assign fields to responsible roles and describe how changes to definitions or values will be requested, reviewed, approved and recorded. Many instructors want ownership split into distinct duties and assigned to roles rather than named people. Working one change through the process shows that it is practical. The memo should state the decision requested on its first page. Cite a source on data governance or stewardship and a data quality source, plus any regulation that motivates the example change. Keep the organization composite. A stewardship table and numbered process steps make the memo easy to approve and the grading straightforward.

Inside the HI520 Unit 9 example

The memo opens with the decision requested, then describes two recent unmanaged changes that broke reports, citing governance research. A section defines three duties per field, and the highlighted sentence explains that merging them is how definitions drift. The stewardship table assigns twelve fields to owners, custodians and approvers, and a margin note explains why committee approval is limited to externally reported fields. The change process is then followed once for the telehealth split: a request from the quality director, citing federal telehealth rules; definitions drafted by the owner; an impact review finding four reports and a dashboard affected; committee approval with an effective date; and a data dictionary entry with footers on reports crossing the change. A closing section explains what would have happened without the process.

Where the points sit in the HI520 Unit 9 rubric

Governance memos tend to be graded on problem definition, the ownership model, the change process, the worked example and memo form. Problem points reward concrete evidence of drift or breakage rather than general statements about data quality. The ownership model carries a large share: graders look for distinct duties assigned to roles, with sensible escalation for high-impact fields. Students lose points when they assign everything to IT or name individuals instead of roles. The change process earns credit when its steps include impact review and recording, not just approval. A worked example often carries its own block, because it shows the process is usable. The last points cover memo form: a plain decision request, a tidy table and correct APA references.

Common HI520 Unit 9 mistakes, and how to avoid them

A frequent weakness in Unit 9 is a memo that says data should be governed without assigning any field to anyone. Another is giving every duty to the database administrator, which merges defining and maintaining. Some memos name people rather than roles, so the plan breaks when someone leaves. Change processes often stop at approval and never record the change in a data dictionary, which is what lets later readers interpret old data. Many students skip the worked example, leaving the process untested. Memos that bury the decision on the last page frustrate a committee reader. For your own governance memo, list the fields in your database, who uses each one and any recent problem a change caused, with the prompt, and the stewardship table can be built from there.

Get an HI520 Unit 9 example written to your instructions

Governance prompts often name the organization, its committee and the fields in dispute. Share that Unit 9 scenario with the HI520 rubric, any memo layout the instructor requires, and a change request if one should anchor the example. A memo built on those details arrives within 24-48h, and the first custom sample costs nothing. The paper above is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official Purdue University Global document.

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HI520 Unit 9 questions, answered

Where can I find a free HI520 Unit 9 sample paper?

You can read the whole Unit 9 memo here, assigning twelve fields to roles and tracing one change to the data dictionary.

What are the three duties in data stewardship?

Defining what a field means, maintaining it in the database and approving changes to its definition or values.

Why assign fields to roles rather than people?

So the stewardship table still works when staff change jobs or leave.

Which fields need committee approval?

Those used in external reports or quality measures, where a change in meaning would change a published number.

Why record changes in a data dictionary?

So anyone reading older data knows when a definition changed, as with the telehealth split's effective date.