What is Data Stewardship and Why is It Important?

• August 27, 2024

In today’s digital world, data has become one of the most valuable resources for organizations. From businesses and governments to researchers and nonprofits, data drives decision-making, innovation, and growth. However, with the increasing reliance on data comes the critical need to manage it effectively and responsibly. This is where data stewardship comes into play. But what exactly is data stewardship, and why is it so important?

What is Data Stewardship?

Data stewardship refers to the management and oversight of an organization’s data assets to ensure they are properly collected, stored, maintained, and used. A data steward is responsible for ensuring that data is accurate, accessible, secure, and compliant with relevant regulations and policies. Unlike data governance, which involves setting the overall policies and standards for data management, data stewardship is more hands-on, focusing on the implementation and enforcement of these policies on a day-to-day basis.

A data steward acts as a custodian of data, overseeing its lifecycle from creation to disposal, ensuring that data remains of high quality and is used ethically. This role often involves coordinating with different departments to ensure that data is consistent and accessible across the organization while maintaining privacy and security standards.

Key Responsibilities of Data Stewards

Data stewards play a critical role in ensuring that an organization’s data is reliable and trustworthy. Their responsibilities typically include:

• Data Quality: Ensuring that data is accurate, complete, and up-to-date. This involves regular audits, cleaning, and validation processes to maintain high data standards.
• Data Access and Security: Managing who can access data, ensuring that sensitive information is protected, and implementing appropriate security measures to prevent unauthorized access.
• Data Documentation and Metadata Management: Creating and maintaining documentation that describes data sources, structure, and usage, which helps other users understand the data and its context.
• Compliance and Ethical Use: Ensuring that data practices comply with relevant laws and regulations (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA) and promoting the ethical use of data throughout the organization.
• Collaboration and Communication: Working with various departments to ensure that data is managed consistently across the organization and that stakeholders are informed about best practices for data usage.

5 Types of Data Stewards

Every organization is different when it comes to business processes, IT systems, data sources, and policies. Therefore, different types of data stewards exist that might focus on data in specific contexts. These different types of data stewards can be divided into five categories.

George Firican from lightsondata.com did a perfect job dividing data stewards into these five different categories. Below you’ll find our interpretation of his beneficial video.

Domain data steward

Also known as a data object data steward or subject area data steward, this data steward is primarily responsible for the master and reference data within one business data domain (e.g., Customer Data). They are the subject matter expert of their specific data domain.

Domain data stewards can work with and define things like company data hierarchy, finance data, addresses, industry codes, and contact information. They need to have strong executive sponsorship to ensure the rules and processes they put in place are followed diligently (as is for data governance in general). They also need to reach across lines between departments and responsibilities and interact closely with a “cross-departmental team of subject matter experts.”

This is one of the most common types of data stewardship. The people who assume this position are often in a managerial or business analyst role. It’s hard to find volunteers from these fields because the job is time-consuming, and people often don’t want to do it. They also need to communicate often and require the strong executive sponsorship we mentioned earlier, making this one of the more difficult data steward types to implement.

Functional data steward

Depending on the company’s size, these data stewards will only manage critical data (reference, master, and transactional) related to one particular business function (e.g., sales or marketing). They will be responsible for the data’s quality, use, and meaning within this function. They will also help define data governance rules and policies for that function.

A functional data steward’s job can get somewhat complicated when asked to interact with data that crosses over multiple departments. The rules and hierarchies can conflict and muddle the items the business data steward is working on.

A business data steward or data governance program should always be enterprise-wide. A department-specific one will inevitably establish rules that only apply to that department and lead to inter-departmental data confusion.

Process data steward

A process data steward manages all data involved with one business process. They will help improve the process by working in all the data domains that the process involves. Because they are working in multiple domains, they will need reliable cross-process governance to ensure their data element’s reliability and accuracy. This also means that they regularly interact with the functional and domain data stewards to share knowledge about specific data.

Technical data steward

Technical data stewards are also referred to as System Data Stewards because they operate with the data in one or more IT systems. Someone like an enterprise data architect, MDM practitioner, or data modeler would fall under this category.

Within their specific system, they will understand how the data is created, stored, transformed, and moved within and between technical systems.

Technical data stewards also work closely with functional and domain data stewards to populate the data dictionary, business glossary, and data catalog.

They also work with data custodians to implement data governance decisions within the IT data systems.

Lead data steward

This head data stewardship role leads a team of other stewards for a specific data domain. They are the guiding light for that particular domain. All the other stewards report to and perform tasks for them. Lead data stewards can also approve corrections to master data or changes to reference data.

They provide leadership, direction, management, change, advocacy for that domain’s data and metadata.

Why is Data Stewardship Important?

The importance of data stewardship cannot be overstated. As organizations increasingly depend on data to drive their operations, the need for effective data management becomes more crucial. Here are a few key reasons why data stewardship is essential:

1. Ensuring Data Integrity: Data is only valuable if it is accurate and reliable. Data stewardship ensures that data remains of high quality, free from errors, and fit for its intended purpose. This is especially important in industries like healthcare, finance, and scientific research, where decisions based on faulty data can have serious consequences.
2. Protecting Privacy and Security: With the rise in data breaches and cyberattacks, safeguarding sensitive information is a top priority for organizations. Data stewardship helps protect data from unauthorized access, ensuring that privacy and security protocols are strictly followed. This is vital for maintaining customer trust and avoiding legal repercussions.
3. Compliance with Regulations: Many industries are subject to strict data regulations that govern how data must be collected, stored, and used. Data stewardship ensures that an organization remains compliant with these regulations, reducing the risk of fines, penalties, and reputational damage.
4. Supporting Data-Driven Decision Making: High-quality data enables organizations to make informed, data-driven decisions. Data stewardship ensures that decision-makers have access to the accurate and relevant data they need to guide strategy, optimize operations, and drive innovation.
5. Fostering Ethical Data Use: As organizations collect more data on individuals, ethical considerations become increasingly important. Data stewardship helps promote the responsible and ethical use of data, ensuring that it is used in ways that respect individual rights and do not cause harm.

The Future of Data Stewardship

As data continues to grow in volume and complexity, the role of data stewards will become even more critical. Emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and big data analytics will require even greater attention to data quality, security, and ethics. Organizations that invest in strong data stewardship practices will be better positioned to harness the full potential of their data while minimizing risks.

Data stewardship is the backbone of effective data management. It ensures that data remains accurate, secure, and compliant, allowing organizations to leverage their data responsibly and effectively. As the value of data continues to rise, the importance of data stewardship will only continue to grow. Organizations that prioritize data stewardship will not only protect their data assets but also gain a competitive advantage in the data-driven world.

Photo and information via Ataccama