Designing policies (IBM Knowledge Catalog)

Last updated: Feb 02, 2024

When you design a policy, you must know the data protection standards, and regulations that your company adheres to. A policy describes how data is consumed. It is based on the rules that you define. Policies are governance artifacts that you create within a category.

You must have the required permissions to create governance artifacts. See Required permissions.

Properties of policies

Policies have these standard properties that are similar to other governance artifacts.

Property or behavior	Supports?	Explanation
Must have unique names?	Yes	Policy names must be unique within a category.
Description?	Yes	Optional. Include a description to help users find this policy.
Add relationships to other policies?	Yes	See Relationships with other policies.
Add relationships to other types of governance artifacts?	Yes	See Relationships with other types of governance artifacts.
Add relationship to asset?	Yes	See Asset relationships in catalogs.
Add custom properties?	Yes	See Custom properties and relationships for governance artifacts and catalog assets.
Add custom relationships?	Yes	See Custom properties and relationships for governance artifacts and catalog assets.
Organize in categories?	Yes	The primary category for the artifact determines who can view or modify the artifact. See Categories.
Import from a file?	Yes	See Importing governance artifacts.
Import from a Knowledge Accelerator?	No
Export to a file?	Yes	See Exporting governance artifacts.
Managed by workflows?	Yes	See Workflows.
Specify effective start and end dates?	Yes	See Effective dates.
Assign a Steward?	Yes	See Stewards.
Add tags as properties?	Yes	See Tags.
Assign to an asset?	No
Assign to a column in a data asset?	No
Automated assignment to assets during profiling or enrichment?	No
Predefined artifacts?	No

Relationships with other types of governance artifacts

You can add relationships between a policy and other types of governance artifacts.

Required category permissions You must have one of these category collaborator roles in the primary categories for both artifacts to add a relationship between them:

Admin
Owner
Editor
A custom role with the permission to edit both artifact types.

You can assign Governance rules to the policy. The governance rules that you select must be published.

You can assign Data protection rules to the policy. In this case the policy has no effect on the enforcement of the rule, nor can you see it from the rule that is listed in a policy.

You can assign the following artifacts to a policy:

Classifications
Select the classifications to which you want to relate the policy. A policy can relate to multiple classifications.
Business terms
Select the business term to which you want to relate the policy. A policy can relate to multiple business terms.

Relationships with other policies

You can assign subpolicies to the policy. The subpolicies that you select must be published. Each policy can contain multiple subpolicies and each policy can reference one or more rules. If a policy has subpolicies, it is the parent policy of those subpolicies. Subpolicies can have only one parent policy.

Policies and rules describe the characteristics for making information resources compliant with corporate objectives. You can organize policies in a hierarchy based on their meaning and relationships to one another.

For example, a policy that is named High Quality Data states that data must meet a high quality standard. A subpolicy of High Quality Data called High Quality Customer Data states that customer data must meet a high quality standard. The High Quality Customer Data policy references a governance rule called Postal Codes Verification. This rule states that customer addresses must use valid postal codes, as provided by the post office.

Another example: The policy Software Security states that security procedures must be in place concerning software. A second policy, named Firewalls states that a firewall must be implemented. A third policy named Credentials states that passwords are required for all computers hosting databases. The author of the policy Software Security specifies that Firewalls and Credentials are subpolicies of Software Security. Therefore, Software Security is the parent policy of the information governance policies Firewalls and Credentials.

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Parent topic: Governance artifacts