Authors: Nagender Yamsani
Abstract: Enterprise-wide reference data has emerged as a foundational element for ensuring consistency, control, and operational integrity within complex institutional environments where fragmented data ownership and system proliferation create structural risk. Persistent inconsistencies in shared reference domains often undermine governance objectives, increase reconciliation effort, and propagate errors across dependent processes, highlighting a gap between enterprise data strategy and practical implementation models. The purpose of this research is to establish a structured architectural and operating framework for centralized reference data foundations that aligns stewardship accountability, governance controls, and technical design into a cohesive institutional capability. A mixed-methods approach is adopted, integrating qualitative analysis of enterprise operating models and governance mechanisms with comparative evidence mapping drawn from large-scale institutional reference data implementations. The findings demonstrate that effective centralization depends not on tooling alone, but on the coordinated design of stewardship roles, control workflows, integration patterns, and distribution services that collectively enforce data integrity at scale. The research contributes to a practical, implementation-oriented framework that clarifies how reference data hubs can be institutionalized as shared infrastructure rather than treated as isolated data initiatives. The implications extend to both academic inquiry and professional practice by providing a replicable foundation for reducing operational risk, strengthening governance assurance, and enabling dependable downstream consumption in environments characterized by high system interdependence and regulatory sensitivity.
DOI: http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18296676
