Without strong data governance, AI doesn't just scale innovation—it scales risk, amplifying data quality issues, compliance exposure, bias, and untrusted outcomes across the organization. Instead of driving confidence and better decisions, AI can end up accelerating the very problems organizations are trying to solve.
DBTA recently held a roundtable webinar, Achieving Trusted Data: Top Trends in Data Governance, with industry experts who explored the top trends in data governance for 2026, and how leading organizations are modernizing their approaches to enable AI and analytics success.
According to Jacques Lateo, senior product manager at Reltio, top trends in data governance include the following:
- Built-in governance with trust, auditability, privacy, and security
- Agentic automation for governance and stewardship
- Semantic layer with rich context including meaning, relationships, and interactions
- Democratization with trusted real-time context at the point of action
Reltio offers solutions that harmonizes, unifies, and governs core data in real time, Lateo said. Reltio Intelligent Graph links unified entities, relationships, and meaning. The Reltio Identity Builder improves consumer match discovery and strengthens context with enriched data.
David Thain, product marketing lead at Informatica, stressed that AI elevated data governance tools. A framework for AI governance includes observing, delivering, inventorying, and controlling. Scan AI deployment platforms and observe performance over time. Manage quality for unstructured data. Discover, classify, and augment AI assets across major ecosystems. Automate risk and compliance workflows.
Creating a data foundation for your business is more urgent and important than ever, said Jerod Johnson director, technology evangelism at CData Software.
Governance frameworks built for a single-speed, replication-first world are showing their limits. Trusted data in 2026 requires policies, controls, and tooling that span both analytical and operational data—replicated and live, read and write, Johnson concluded.
For the full webinar, featuring a more in-depth discussion, Q&A, and more, you can view an archived version of the webinar here.