Data catalogue
A searchable inventory of an organisation’s data assets, describing what each dataset contains, where it lives, who owns it and how it may be used. A catalogue turns scattered tables, files and reports into something people can find, assess and request access to.
Why it matters
Most organisations hold more data than anyone can describe from memory. Without a catalogue, analysts rebuild datasets that already exist, sensitive data sits in places nobody has recorded, and AI projects stall while teams work out what is available and whether they are allowed to use it.
For risk and technology leaders, the catalogue is where ownership, classification and lineage become visible. It is only useful if it is kept current, which means updates must be part of how pipelines and products are released rather than a periodic documentation exercise.
In practice
For example, a UK housing association with data spread across a legacy asset system, a CRM and many spreadsheets might catalogue its twenty most-used datasets first, each with a named owner, a plain-English description, a sensitivity label and a link to the pipeline that produces it, before expanding coverage as new data products are built.
Where Rodan fits
Rodan treats cataloguing as part of building a governed data foundation in Analytics and Intelligence work. The Data Governance Toolkit scores inventory as one of six governance domains.