The Data Cookbook is McMaster’s institutional data catalogue that provides a centralized location for documenting data definitions, stewardship, processes, queries, reports, and dashboards. It is an authoritative source for understanding and documenting data.
Purpose and Context:
The Data Cookbook enables consistent understanding of data across departments and supports transparency in governance. It links stewardship and classification information directly to data, ensuring data users know how to access and handle data responsibly.
Why it matters:
Having a single source of truth reduces duplication, ensures consistency in reporting and analysis, and makes it easier to comply with policies. It also helps new staff to quickly understand existing data assts and governance processes.
By maintaining an institutional data catalogue, we give ourselves the opportunity to address formerly intractable data issues. In the current environment, comprehensively tracking the lineage of data as it is transferred and transformed across systems is impossible. Only by beginning the hard work of centrally cataloguing our data resources can we gain a full understanding of the data landscape at McMaster.
Practical application for users: