Data Change Management Procedure Template| Data Governance Framework

The Data Change Management Procedure is a structured approach within Data Governance that ensures data modifications are controlled, documented, and compliant with organizational policies. It defines the process for requesting, reviewing, approving, and implementing data changes while minimizing risks such as data corruption, inconsistency, or security breaches. This procedure helps maintain data integrity, accuracy, and regulatory compliance. It typically involves stakeholders from IT, compliance, and business units to ensure smooth and accountable data transitions.

Purpose of Change Management Procedure

1. Data Change Management Procedure exists to fulfill two main objectives. 

2. The procedure defines the essential procedures to preserve data integrity confidentiality and availability throughout changes directed by your business needs or legal requirements. 

3. The procedure helps execute impact assessments through a standardized change process which meets both business needs and regulatory standards.

4. The procedure must help reduce business interruptions alongside ensuring secure data management through the transformation process.

Roles and Responsibilities in Data Change Management Procedure

The Chief Information Officer holds responsibility to create organization-wide change management policies and implement them effectively.

1. Business (Data) Owner 

The business owner creates change-related business requirements while conducting business impact analyses and ensuring proper implementation of these specifications. The person serves in two roles that involve participation in forming and choosing members to join the Change Advisory Board (CAB).

2. System Owners

The System Owner performs tasks involving technical requirements development for the change together with technical evaluation of change impact across confidentiality and system integrity and availability as well as technical requirement verification. The change advocate helps form selection choices regarding who will be joining the

Change Advisory Board (CAB).

• The Change Manager schedules all daily tasks which assist the CAB functions.
  
  
• The Change Advisory Board functions as the governing entity for the Data Change Management process. 

The change advisory board requires an appointed leader to maintain its activities according to a designated individual such as the change manager.
CAB will consist of: 

1. The CIO occupies this role because strategic risks affect the change processes directly.

2. A Change Advisory Board must include both Business owners, system owners, change managers and information system administrators.

3. Where needed, security and compliance managers and other IT and business personnel

4. The role of Information System Administrators entails establishing technical change management standards while performing change impact analysis and monitoring all change management operations.

Change Management Process Steps 

Test and Schedule

The steps below will be executed before any implementation takes place when the change type identifies as Normal. 

1. A testing platform that duplicates the production environment will operate independently from all production systems.

2. The test environments will work without displaying any sensitive data using plain text.

3. The test environment will receive protection from security measures for access control purposes.

4. Check if the retention system achieves or surpasses established regulatory or compliance requirements.

5. The implementation of test plans will support testing of new changes according to business and regulatory standards while assessing confidentiality along with integrity and availability aspects.

6. The deployment process will begin after relevant business and system owners approve the test results.

7. The testing decision for emergency changes will be determined by CAB. Post-implementation procedures will be put into effect following necessary immediate deployments when IT testing occurred after implementation.

8. Sent to all staff members by a general announcement will notify them about change deployment schedules once tests succeed and respective business and system owners grant their approval.

9. The implementation of new changes must occur during periods with minimal use if an emergency change is not required.

10. Financial systems will not receive change schedule deployments within critical end of month, quarter or yearly financial periods.

11. The deployment of changes will not take place anytime during crucial organizational deadlines and internal/external regulatory audits.

12. Information system administrators will restore backup data of all changed information to its state before change deployment when deployment proves unsuccessful. The deployment failure will be reported to CAB while major organizational failures will be relayed to the full organization. 

Evaluate and Approve

Formal changes need to follow structured evaluation procedures to assess their change requests plus their estimated impact.  

1. Standard change request documentation requires at least a title with its change control ID along with detailed information about the change and its timeline and groups of stakeholders and business reasoning followed by estimated change effects and change category.

2. The review of new change requests needs key stakeholders to examine their effects before scheduled CAB sessions. The CAB needs access to evaluation results of every requested change at the assessment stage.

3. Standard changes which fall under established guidelines do not need CAB approval before implementation. The CAB needs to establish which modifications fit within the parameters of Standard Change procedures.

4. The CAB should evaluate change requests that present information regarding these three aspects:

• The CAB needs to evaluate the selected benefits that support the critical service during assessment procedures.
  
  
• Standard changes that do not affect the critical service may be managed at lower organizational positions than CAB.
  
  
• The organization's resilience needs along with changes to these needs from the upcoming modification should be evaluated during CAB assessment.
  • Financial implications
    
    
• The CAB should evaluate potential risks which arise from performing or failing to execute a change. The CIs and their related assets need to be evaluated with regards to their resilience requirements.
• • Urgency
  • Change manager

Users who operate systems or applications need to participate during the technical evaluation procedure of requested changes.

5. After CAB approval of the change the change manager conducts an evaluation and the system or application owners perform technical assessments. Aspects to consider includes: 

• • Impacts to connected systems
  • Impacts on users and usability
  • Impacts on non-IT systems

The change implementation needs and cognitive abilities of staff to execute the modifications must be assessed. Research schedules will be considered so the transformation does not negatively affect operations.

Test and Schedule

Organizations will follow the steps listed below before implementing changes especially when the change involves normal operations. 

1. A test environment similar to the production environment will be established independently of production systems.

2. The test spaces will operate without exposing valuable information in readable form.

3. Security protocols will protect all routes to reach the test environment.

4. Check whether the retention system fulfills all regulatory or compliance standards. Validate the process to exceed current requirements.

5. The testing process will utilize established test plans to verify changes for business and regulatory compliance which incorporates confidentiality and integrity together with availability principles.

6. Relevant business and system owners will approve test results before activating the deployment process.

7. The CAB will determine testing decisions for all emergency changes. The required post-implementation procedures will become effective for emergency changes when pre-implementation testing fails to take place.

8. The deployment schedule announcement will go out to staff members who need the affected system documentation or applications when both testing and business and system owner approvals are obtained.

Review and Close

1. Post-implementation review sessions will be conducted by the business or system owner who started the change process after every successful change deployment. The main goal of this activity consists of reviewing how the entire change lifecycle was managed including assessment of its outcome versus intended aims. CAB will receive identified opportunities for improvements which will lead to additional change implementation.

2. Post-implementation review activities must confirm improvements before the change owner will close the changes.

Summary

A proper data change management procedure enables administrators to control all modifications through documented and reviewed evaluation processes that maintain data accuracy and consistency. The procedure lowers operational risk and enables both regulatory compliance and enables tracking of modifications through each step.