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Hello colleagues,

Our local health department is actively strengthening our informatics structure. We're currently:

• ironing out an informatics strategic plan,
• establishing an informatics governance committee, and
• beginning to document governance (charter, decision rights, roles, and core policies).

In preliminary scans, we've noticed few agencies with written, department‑level governance or informatics‑specific policies available to adapt. If your agency has gone through this, we'd greatly appreciate any tips, lessons learned, or templates you're willing to share.

Artifacts and examples we're looking for:

• A committee charter (purpose, membership model, decision scope, escalation/appeals)
• Decision‑rights/RACI frameworks (who decides what; how data stewardship is assigned)
• A concise policy starter set for informatics (privacy/security alignment; access control; data quality; lifecycle/retention; incident response)
• Intake/approval workflow for new systems, integrations, or data exchanges
• Measures of governance effectiveness (e.g., turnaround times, policy adoption, data quality signals)
• Enablement materials for data stewards and program leads (onboarding guides, training plans)

Also helpful: what you wish you'd known before you started-pitfalls to avoid, the minimum viable set of policies, and how you framed governance so it resonated with programs, IT, and leadership.

We're happy to share back what we build (charter, policy outlines, and review workflow) once piloted. Thank you in advance for any resources, attachments, or links!

Thank you,

Mandy Norstad
Health Informatics Coordinator, Olmsted County Public Health Services (MN)