Crossing the Data Divide: Data Governance Agent Team Working Example, Part 2
Dataversity, Wednesday, October 21st, 2026
Part 2 of a governance-agent design adds state resolution: working out data's governed state before policy is applied.
John Wills continues his working example of a data governance agent team that acts as an operational control plane.
Part 1 used a decision-rights matrix plus agents to pass, block or escalate changes but assumed attributes like PII, geography and purpose were already known, so Part 2 introduces state resolution, the step that determines those attributes.
His key point is that data's governed state can change without the data changing or even moving, for example when a copy goes to an external processor abroad or access widens from service to marketing.
He separates state, what is true, from policy, what is permitted, so the system does not become one giant agent.