Data Governance Lead - Contract

Job Title :- Data Governance Lead
Location :- Quincy MA (Hybrid)
Duration :- 4 Months Contract(With Possibility of extension)
37.5 hours/week

Must local to MA.
Must have recent Data Governance experience

Client is looking for a highly skilled and experienced candidate to fill the Data Governance Lead position for Data Modernization Initiative (DMI) Projects.

The ideal candidate provides strategic and operational leadership for data governance activities supporting statewide public health data modernization initiatives. This role establishes and oversees data governance frameworks, standards, and stewardship models to ensure public health data are accurate, secure, interoperable, and shaped for policy, surveillance, and program decision-making. The position works closely with epidemiology, analytics, IT, program leadership, and external partners to strengthen trust and usability of public health data across the state.

In this role, you are comfortable speaking to both business and technical stakeholders to ensure combined understanding and collaborative solutions. This role will be expected to own tasks and follow-up related to cloud data platform requirements and implementation activities and establish well documented best practices and processes.

DETAILED LIST OF JOB DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:

Data Governance Leadership

• Establish governance policies, standards, and operating procedures covering data quality, metadata, access, privacy, and lifecycle management
• Specifying what information needs to exist in the Enterprise Data Platform (EDP) for every dataset (ex: required metadata fields, codebooks, lineage diagrams, refresh cadence, access rules, etc.)
• Specifying how work is done in EDP (ex: naming conventions, versioning, code standardization, etc.)
• Serving in an advisory role in governance forums - especially as a technical advisor on EDP capabilities, constraints, best practices, etc.
• Align governance activities with public health data modernization initiatives, including cloud migration, system modernization, and interoperability efforts
• Ensuring governance is embedded into new data platforms, pipelines, and analytic tools
• Enabling standardization of data by ensuring that reference tables, shared mappings, reusable transformations, etc... exist in EDP to support standardization where possible.
• Establish data quality expectations and oversight processes in collaboration with data quality and informatics teams
• Support health equity initiatives by ensuring standardized, complete, and accurate demographic data

Privacy, Security & Compliance

• Partner with legal, privacy, and security teams to ensure governance policies align with HIPAA, state privacy laws, and data use agreements
• Support appropriate data access, sharing, and transparency while protecting sensitive public health information

Stakeholder Engagement & Change Management

• Serve as a liaison between public health programs, IT, epidemiology, Developers and external partners on governance matters
• Translate governance concepts into practical guidance for program and technical staff
• Support training and communication to build data governance literacy across the agency
• Represent the state in interstate, federal, or multi-agency data governance discussions as needed

Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in public health, Health Informatics, Information Systems, Data Management, Public Administration, or related field, or equivalent experience
• 7 years of experience in data governance, data management, public health informatics, or enterprise data roles
• Demonstrated experience establishing or leading data governance programs in government or regulated environments
• Strong understanding of public health data domains and data lifecycle management
• Ability to work effectively across programs, agencies, and technical disciplines
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including policy and documentation development
• Strong change management and organizational adoption skills

Bonus Qualifications:

• Master's degree in public health (MPH), Health Informatics, or related field
• Experience supporting state or federal public health data modernization initiatives
• Familiarity with CDC Data Modernization Initiative (DMI) principles and funding requirements
• Experience with metadata management, data catalogs, or governance tooling used in public-sector environments
• Knowledge of Medicaid, surveillance, registry, laboratory, or vital records data systems
• Experience supporting grant-funded programs, performance reporting, or audits