| Course | BU 455 Big Data Management |
|---|---|
| Unit | Unit 6 |
| Paper type | Governance and retention plan |
| Length | About 830 words, 6 pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Herzing University |
| Program | BS in Business Analytics |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for BU 455 Unit 6
Eight Categories, Each With a Clock, a Reader, a Deleter and a Receipt: A Governance and Retention Plan for a Composite Bike-Share Operator's Rider and Fleet Data
Student Name
Business, Herzing University
BU 455: Big Data Management
Instructor Name
March 25, 2026
Eight Categories, Each With a Clock, a Reader, a Deleter and a Receipt: A Governance and Retention Plan for a Composite Bike-Share Operator's Rider and Fleet Data
Why the Plan Names People and Dates
Pedalworks Mobility, the composite bike-share operator used through this course, now holds rider accounts, trips, precise location traces, payments, app activity, maintenance records, photos and station history, spread across a database, columnar files and object storage. Its current policy says data are kept as long as needed and deleted when no longer required. That sentence names no one, sets no date and produces no evidence, so nothing is ever deleted. This plan replaces it. Every rule states which category of data it covers, how long that category is held, which role may read it, who carries out the deletion, and what record afterward proves the deletion happened.
The DAMA-DMBOK framework treats data governance as the exercise of authority and control over data assets, with named stewards accountable for each domain (DAMA International, 2017). The plan applies that idea at the scale of a small company: the operations director is appointed privacy lead and owns the plan, the data engineer carries out deletions, and each category has a named reader role.
The Rules
Retention periods were set from three sources: what the business uses the data for, what the city contract requires, and advice from the company's lawyer and accountant.
| Category | Held for | Who may read | Who deletes | Proof of deletion |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rider accounts: name, email, phone | Life of account plus 24 months after closure | Customer support, billing | Data engineer, monthly job | Deletion log: count and hashed account IDs, signed by privacy lead |
| Trips with rider identity | 18 months identifiable; then rider replaced by a random token and times rounded to the hour, kept 5 years | Operations analysts; support for disputes | Data engineer, monthly job | Log of rows tokenized per month |
| Precise location traces during trips | 90 days; then rounded to a 100-meter grid with rider link removed | Security lead, analytics lead | Data engineer, nightly job | Log of messages coarsened per night |
| Payments | Card numbers never stored; transaction records 7 years | Finance | Data engineer, annual job | Annual deletion certificate to finance |
| App events | 13 months, then weekly aggregates only | Product team | Data engineer, monthly job | Log of events removed |
| Maintenance records | Life of the bike plus 3 years | Fleet manager, analysts | Fleet manager, on bike retirement | Retirement record lists deleted records |
| Damage photos | 12 months or until any claim closes, whichever is later | Fleet manager, insurer on request | Object storage expiry rule | Storage expiry log |
| Station status | Every minute for 90 days; five-minute snapshots for 5 years | Operations, city feed | Nightly job | Log of rows downsampled |
Why Location Data Get the Shortest Clock
Precise location traces are held for 90 days, far shorter than trips, because they are the most revealing data the company holds. A sequence of pings shows where a rider started and ended a journey and the route between, and repeated trips reveal home, workplace and routine. De Montjoye et al. (2013) found in a study of mobile phone location records that four points in space and time were enough to single out 95 percent of individuals, even without names. A bike trip record with precise start and end locations and times is close to that kind of data. Ninety days covers the security lead's need to investigate thefts and the analytics lead's need for recent route patterns; after that, the traces are rounded to a 100-meter grid and separated from the rider, which keeps fleet and battery analysis possible while removing most of the risk.
What the City Receives
The contract requires Pedalworks to share trip data with the city for transportation planning. The city receives trip records without rider identity, with start and end locations rounded to the nearest block and times to the nearest 15 minutes, in the Mobility Data Specification format that many cities use for shared bikes and scooters (Open Mobility Foundation, n.d.). The city may keep its copy under its own records rules, which the plan notes but cannot control; that is why the data are reduced before they leave the company rather than after.
When a Rider Asks to Be Deleted
Scheduled rules handle most deletion, but riders can also ask for their data to be removed before the schedule would do it. Such a request goes to customer support, which confirms the rider's identity through the email on file and passes a ticket to the data engineer within two working days. The engineer runs the same job the schedule uses, limited to that rider: the account is deleted, identifiable trips are tokenized early and precise traces are coarsened. Records the company must keep for other reasons, such as payment transactions for tax purposes, are retained but separated from the rider's name, and the rider is told which records remain and why. The ticket is closed only when the deletion log shows the job's line, so the proof for an individual request is the same kind of record as for the monthly jobs.
How Deletion Is Proven
A deletion that leaves no record cannot be distinguished from one that never happened. Every scheduled job writes a line to a deletion log table: the category, the date, the rule applied and the number of records affected, without the deleted content itself. Object storage expiry rules produce the provider's own logs, which are exported monthly. The privacy lead reviews the log each month and signs a one-page summary. Backups are the known gap: database backups are kept for 35 days, so deleted data persist in backups until they expire, and the plan says so plainly rather than claiming immediate erasure. When old storage devices are retired, the provider's sanitization certificate is filed, following the approach in NIST guidance on media sanitization (Kissel et al., 2014).
The plan does not include a full lineage diagram. A table showing where each category flows, from the bike or app into the database, the files and the city feed, serves the same purpose for a company of this size and is easier to keep current. It will be reviewed each January and whenever a new data source is added. Pedalworks and all categories and periods here are composites for this course.
References
DAMA International. (2017). DAMA-DMBOK: Data management body of knowledge (2nd ed.). Technics Publications.
de Montjoye, Y.-A., Hidalgo, C. A., Verleysen, M., & Blondel, V. D. (2013). Unique in the crowd: The privacy bounds of human mobility. Scientific Reports, 3, Article 1376. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep01376
Kissel, R., Regenscheid, A., Scholl, M., & Stine, K. (2014). Guidelines for media sanitization (NIST Special Publication 800-88, Rev. 1). National Institute of Standards and Technology. https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.SP.800-88r1
Open Mobility Foundation. (n.d.). Mobility data specification. https://github.com/openmobilityfoundation/mobility-data-specification
The Herzing BU 455 Unit 6 instructions
BU 455 Unit 6 asks students to write a data governance and retention plan. Typical requirements include identifying data categories, setting retention periods with reasons, naming roles that may access each category, assigning responsibility for deletion and describing how deletion is verified. Many instructors ask how long to keep each category and whether a lineage diagram is required; periods should follow business, contractual and legal needs, and a flow table can substitute for a diagram. Using an employer's retention schedule as the model is discouraged. The plan is usually a rules table with an APA 7 explanation, and strong plans treat sensitive data such as location more strictly than routine records.
How this BU 455 Unit 6 example is built
The plan begins by showing why the old policy deleted nothing and appoints named roles, citing a governance framework. A table sets out eight categories with retention, readers, deleter and proof. A section justifies the 90-day limit on precise location traces with research on re-identification. A section describes what the city receives and why data are reduced before leaving the company. A section explains the deletion log, storage expiry logs, the backup gap and media sanitization guidance. A section describes how an individual rider's deletion request is handled. The close explains why a flow table replaces a lineage diagram and when the plan is reviewed.
Where the points sit in the BU 455 Unit 6 rubric
Governance plan rubrics at Herzing usually reward complete categories, justified retention periods, named access roles, assigned deletion responsibility and verifiable proof, with writing and sources. Categories earn full credit when every data type the organization holds appears. Retention periods score highest when each has a reason drawn from use, contract or law. Access roles reward naming who may read each category. Deletion responsibility is judged on whether a specific role carries it out. Proof earns points when a record shows deletion happened. Instructors also credit honesty about gaps, such as backups, and stricter treatment of sensitive data like precise locations.
BU 455 Unit 6 help: mistakes that cost points
Governance plans often lose points by stating principles such as data will be kept as long as necessary, which names no one and sets no date. Another common problem is one retention period for everything, ignoring differences in sensitivity. Students frequently forget to say who deletes data or how deletion is proven. Some claim immediate erasure while backups keep copies for weeks. Others share data with partners without reducing it first. Many omit individual deletion requests. Others write a deletion rule nobody can verify, when a signed monthly log or a storage expiry record would turn the promise into evidence a reviewer can check. Finally, modeling the plan on your company's retention schedule can reveal internal policy; building it for the case shows the same understanding without disclosing anything.
Get a BU 455 Unit 6 example written to your instructions
Copy the Unit 6 instructions and the BU 455 rubric out of your classroom, with whatever case or data inventory the assignment supplies. The custom example catalogs the data before writing any rule, gives each category a period and a starting event, writes access as roles, and traces one figure end to end. First custom sample free, returned in 24 to 48 hours.
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BU 455 Unit 6 questions, answered
How long should I say each category is held?
Take the period from the case, from a source you cite with its date, or from a business reason you state, and make clear which of the three you used. Durations appearing with no origin are the commonest weakness in these plans. Where the assignment expects a legal minimum, name the requirement you are relying on instead of quoting a number from memory, since these differ by jurisdiction and are revised.
Does the plan need a lineage diagram?
The instructions decide, and a traced path set out in a table often reads better than a drawing. The criterion wants one figure followed the whole way back: the report it appears in, the job that computed it, the stored records that job read, and where those records originally arrived from. A diagram covering everything at once usually shows less than a single path followed properly.
Can I use my company's retention schedule as the model?
Leave it out of the document. A retention schedule reflects legal advice the organization paid for, contracts it signed and decisions about its own risk, which is why such schedules are commonly marked confidential. Build the plan from the case and cite public sources for anything legal. Recognizing that a period is useless without an event to start it is the transferable part, and that stays with you.
Where can I find a free BU 455 Unit 6 sample paper?
The complete BU 455 Unit 6 governance and retention plan is free to read above, with the eight-rule table, the deletion proof and margin notes. Holding different data categories? Pass along the prompt; a plan built around them comes back free, often inside 48 hours.
How long should each category be kept in BU 455 Unit 6?
As long as a stated business, contract or legal need requires, and no longer. The sample keeps precise locations 90 days, identifiable trips 18 months and payment records 7 years, each with its reason.