DatenGraf
DatenGraf maps how data actually flows through an organisation. The tool runs in the browser: no account, no server, no data leaving the device. It makes visible the knowledge that otherwise stays spread across many heads.
What it is for
In most organisations, each person knows their own section. A case worker knows that she exports records from a specialist system and enters them into a spreadsheet. Nobody holds the whole picture. This becomes apparent when a subject access request arrives, when a system is due for replacement, or when a key person leaves.
DatenGraf models data flows as a directed graph. Nodes are actors, edges are flows with direction, frequency, format and protection requirement. A table of forty rows shows forty individual relationships. The same records as a network show that everything passes through two nodes.
How it is used
You record data flows through a guided dialogue, by CSV import, or through a template that several departments fill in parallel. You then see an interactive network map and a briefing: central nodes, disconnected areas, personal data flows with no named responsibility. A completeness score tells you how far your own documentation can be relied on. Results leave the tool as CSV, image, PDF or link.
In workshops the insight often arrives while recording, not during the analysis. Those taking part see for the first time how their section connects to everyone else’s.
What it does not do
DatenGraf scans no systems and reads no logs. Everything is entered by hand. That is effort, and it is also the point at which scattered knowledge comes together.
The analysis is only as good as the input. With ten nodes it says little, and there you can see the structure with the naked eye anyway. The tool is not a data catalogue, it connects to no running system, and it replaces no legal assessment. It supports documentation under Article 30 GDPR. It decides nothing.
Where the map is finished, the real question begins: what follows from it? That is consulting, not software.
Where it comes from
From running workshops. Working on data holdings with a group calls for a tool that is ready the same morning: costs nothing, needs no sign-off from IT, raises no data protection questions, and puts no one in front of an interface that has to be explained first. What I found always met half of that. So I built it.
It is open because the day should not be the end of it. An organisation that has drawn the map once will want to keep it up to date later, usually with its own fields and its own vocabulary. The tool is free to use, with no registration. The source code is public on GitHub, under an MIT licence.