Since Reference Data is a shared resource, it cannot be changed arbitrarily. The key to successful Reference Data Management is organizational willingness to relinquish local control of shared data. To sustain this support, provide channels to receive and respond to requests for changes to Reference Data. The Data Governance Council should ensure that policies and procedures are implemented to handle changes to data within reference and Master Data environments.

Changes to Reference Data will need to be managed. Minor changes may affect a few rows of data. For example, when the Soviet Union broke into independent states, the term Soviet Union was deprecated and new codes were added. In the healthcare industry, procedure and diagnosis codes are updated annually to account for refinement of existing codes, obsoleting of codes, and the introduction of new codes. Major revisions to Reference Data impact data structure. For example, ICD-10 Diagnostic Codes are structured in ways very different from ICD-9. ICD10 has a different format. There are different values for the same concepts. More importantly, ICD-10 has additional principles of organization. ICD10 codes have a different granularity and are much more specific, so more information is conveyed in a single code. Consequently, there are many more of them (as of 2015, there were 68,000 ICD-10 codes, compared with 13,000 ICD-9s).

The mandated use of ICD-10 codes in the US in 2015 required significant planning. Healthcare companies needed to make system changes as well as adjustments to impacted reporting to account for the new standard.

Types of changes include:

• Row level changes to external Reference Data sets
• Structural changes to external Reference Data sets
• Row level changes to internal Reference Data sets
• Structural changes to internal Reference Data sets
• Creation of new Reference Data sets

Changes can be planned / scheduled or ad hoc. Planned changes, such as monthly or annual updates to industry standard codes, require less governance than ad hoc updates. The process to request new Reference Data sets should account for potential uses beyond those of the original requestor.

Change requests should follow a defined process, as illustrated in this figure. When requests are received, stakeholders should be notified so that impacts can be assessed. If changes need approval, discussions should be held to get that approval. Changes should be communicated.