What is SAS Information Governance?
SAS Information Governance is a data governance solution within SAS Viya that helps organizations discover, classify, track and manage data assets across cloud and on-premises environments. It enables data lineage, data quality assessment, sensitive data detection (PII) and governance policy enforcement to support analytics, AI and regulatory compliance.
How SAS Information Governance works
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Enable enterprise-grade data & AI governance
Regardless of source or where data resides, enable users to find, understand and protect data across the enterprise. Connect business context to technical metadata using open standards. Give governance, analytics and AI teams a shared foundation they can rely on.
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Find & explore data across your organization
Search across data, reports, models and other analytic assets using keyword or natural-language queries. With SAS Viya Copilot for Data Discovery, users can quickly understand what data exists, where it originates and how it’s used.
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Identify & protect sensitive data automatically
Detect and classify sensitive data – including PII – without relying on manual tagging. Apply consistent classification so governance policies follow the data, enabling safe reuse across teams and use cases.
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Evaluate data quality before it affects outcomes
Profile datasets and review quality metrics before they are used in models, reports or pipelines. Assess data health, semantic types and known issues early, so problems are addressed before deployment.
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Trace data lineage & understand downstream impact
Track data from source to destination and see what depends on it. When upstream data changes, quickly identify affected models, reports and pipelines to support informed decisions and regulatory compliance.
SAS Information Governance key capabilities
SAS Information Governance provides a unified approach to discovering, understanding and managing data across your organization. By combining data discovery, quality assessment, lineage tracking and sensitive data classification, it helps teams trust their data, support analytics and AI, and meet regulatory requirements with confidence. Key capabilities include:
- Data discovery across enterprise assets
- Automated sensitive data classification (PII detection)
- Data lineage and impact analysis
- Data quality profiling and scoring
- Business glossary and metadata management
- AI-assisted data discovery (via SAS Viya Copilot)
Get to know SAS Information Governance
SAS Viya is cloud-native and cloud-agnostic
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Recommended resources on SAS Information Governance
SAS Information Governance frequently asked questions
What is SAS Information Governance?
SAS Information Governance is a data governance solution within SAS Viya that helps organizations discover, understand and manage data assets across cloud and on-premises environments. It provides capabilities for data discovery, data quality assessment, data lineage, metadata management and sensitive data classification to support trusted analytics, AI and regulatory compliance
How does SAS Information Governance help organizations manage data?
SAS Information Governance enables organizations to locate and understand data across systems, evaluate its quality, track how it moves and changes, and apply consistent governance policies. This helps ensure data is accurate, secure and suitable for analytics and AI use.
How does SAS Information Governance identify sensitive data such as PII?
SAS Information Governance uses automated data discovery and classification techniques to detect sensitive data, including personally identifiable information (PII). This reduces reliance on manual tagging and ensures consistent application of governance and protection policies.
How does SAS Information Governance support data quality?
Users can profile data sets and review quality metrics – such as completeness, consistency and validity – before using data in analytics or AI workflows. This helps identify and resolve issues early, improving the reliability of downstream insights.
How does SAS Information Governance support data lineage?
Data lineage shows how data moves from source systems through transformations to downstream reports, models and applications. SAS Information Governance provides end-to-end lineage visibility, helping teams understand dependencies, assess the impact of changes, and support audit and compliance requirements.
How is SAS Information Governance different from SAS Information Catalog?
SAS Information Catalog is an application for discovering, indexing and understanding data assets (basic metadata management), while SAS Information Governance is a more advanced, comprehensive solution that builds upon the catalog to provide active, automated data protection, privacy compliance, data quality analysis and lineage.
Does SAS Information Governance work in cloud environments?
Yes. As part of SAS Viya, SAS Information Governance is cloud-native and cloud-agnostic, supporting deployment across major cloud platforms and on-premises environments.