IT Project Manager, Tennessee (Local)

IT Project Manager/ Enterprise Data Governance Consultant, Tennessee (Local)
Location: Remote
Candidate Requirement: Candidates must be local to Tennessee

Position Summary:
We are seeking an experienced Enterprise Data Governance Consultant to support the State of Tennessee Center for Enterprise Data & Analytics (CEDA). The consultant will support enterprise data governance services, AI data preparation, training, communications, stakeholder engagement, and agency implementation initiatives.

The consultant will work under the Enterprise Data Governance Manager's direction to help agencies and departments establish, mature, and sustain effective data governance programs.

The role focuses on managing data as a strategic enterprise asset, improving data trust and quality, reducing risk, enabling secure data sharing, and increasing operational efficiency through standardization.

Primary Responsibilities:

AI Governance, Privacy, Risk & Compliance

• Support responsible AI governance, including ethical, transparent, explainable, accountable, and human-reviewed use of data and AI-enabled systems.
• Document AI use cases, data sources, stewardship responsibilities, risks, and governance checkpoints.
• Coordinate with privacy, security, legal, records, and compliance stakeholders.
• Support the use of AI technologies to automate and streamline governance practices and artifacts.
• Reinforce data classification, access management, data minimization, retention, authorized use, and secure data-sharing requirements.
• Support documentation of risks, issues, policy exceptions, remediation actions, and audit evidence.
• Promote safeguards for HIPAA, FERPA, CJIS, IRS Pub. 1075, PCI, FTI, PII, and other applicable standards.

Data Governance Strategy & Agency Engagement

• Support data governance charters, roadmaps, operating models, stakeholder maps, and implementation plans.
• Assist agencies in defining governance scope, ownership, roles, responsibilities, decision rights, and engagement processes.
• Identify business needs, data pain points, data-quality risks, and opportunities for data sharing and reuse.
• Support governance maturity assessments and develop practical improvement plans.
• Translate complex governance concepts into clear guidance for executives, business teams, data stewards, and operational staff.
• Promote Tennessee’s eight core data governance elements: Organization, Policies, Procedures, Standards/Definitions, Architecture, Data Administration/Controls, Metrics/Reporting, and Audits.

Data Governance Implementation

• Develop and maintain governance artifacts, including RACI charts, business glossaries, data dictionaries, data inventories, issue logs, policy mappings, stewardship plans, and governance roadmaps.
• Document data domains, owners, stewards, business definitions, data flows, quality rules, risks, controls, and metrics.
• Support Playbook-aligned implementation and audit-readiness activities.
• Coordinate with Data Governance Analysts on catalog, metadata, classification, lineage, and documentation requirements.
• Monitor governance metrics and maturity indicators.
• Maintain organized repositories of governance artifacts, meeting records, training materials, communications, and implementation evidence.

Facilitation & Governance Meetings

• Plan, facilitate, and document governance meetings, workshops, steering committee sessions, and stewardship working groups.
• Prepare agendas, meeting materials, decision logs, action trackers, issue logs, and executive-ready summaries.
• Facilitate collaboration among data owners, stewards, business leaders, technology teams, privacy, security, legal, and compliance stakeholders.
• Support resolution of cross-functional data issues by clarifying decisions, documenting options, identifying risks, and escalating unresolved matters.
• Help operationalize governance committees and recurring governance activities.
• Support business-value cases covering benefits, risks, resources, expected outcomes, and implementation options.

Change Management, Communications & Marketing

• Develop and execute stakeholder engagement and change-management plans.
• Create briefings, talking points, newsletters, FAQs, presentations, one-page summaries, intranet content, and adoption messaging.
• Promote data governance as a business-enabling capability.
• Communicate the value of governance through improved data trust, reduced risk, better service delivery, decision-making, and efficiency.
• Identify adoption barriers and recommend targeted interventions such as leadership briefings, training res, job aids, and facilitation support.

Training Development & Delivery

• Develop training plans, course outlines, instructor-led materials, self-service learning content, quick-reference guides, and role-based learning paths.
• Deliver training for data owners, stewards, custodians, producers, consumers, and agency governance teams.
• Support data-fluency training aligned with Tennessee’s governance methodology, tools, and templates.
• Develop practical exercises covering data ownership, business glossaries, data quality, classification, data sharing, metadata, and governance practices.
• Track training feedback, attendance, adoption metrics, and improvement opportunities.
• Reinforce data-quality dimensions including accuracy, timeliness, accessibility, completeness, and consistency.

Required Knowledge, Skills & Abilities

• Strong experience facilitating cross-functional meetings with business, technology, privacy, security, legal, compliance, and executive stakeholders.
• Ability to develop data governance strategies, implementation plans, training plans, communications, and adoption materials.
• Ability to explain complex data governance, data management, metadata, data quality, privacy, and AI governance concepts in plain language.
• Strong stakeholder-management and decision-facilitation skills.
• Experience applying change-management practices to support adoption.
• Ability to develop business-value cases for data governance initiatives.
• Knowledge of governance frameworks, policies, procedures, standards, controls, and audit expectations.
• Understanding of data ownership, stewardship, metadata, data catalogs, data quality, lifecycle management, data sharing, and data risk management.
• Ability to work independently while coordinating with governance leadership, analysts, and agency stakeholders.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to produce executive-ready materials.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in data governance, data management, enterprise information management, organizational change management, training, or stakeholder engagement.
• Experience with state/local government, public-sector programs, or highly regulated environments.
• Familiarity with DAMA-DMBOK, data stewardship, metadata management, data quality, data classification, data lifecycle management, and governance maturity models.
• Familiarity with AI governance, responsible AI principles, or frameworks such as the NIST AI Risk Management Framework.
• Experience developing and delivering training, workshops, presentations, job aids, communications, and adoption campaigns.
• Experience supporting governance councils, committees, working groups, or cross-functional decision-making bodies.
• Experience with enterprise data catalogs, metadata, business glossaries, data inventories, issue tracking, collaboration, or knowledge-management tools.
• Relevant certifications such as CDMP, Prosci/Change Management, PMP, CISA, CIPM, or related credentials are desirable but not required.