Organizations today manage trillions of data points. This data exists across different systems, in various formats, and under the control of different teams. However, most companies face a critical challenge: they don’t fully know where their data actually resides, how it’s being used, or whether it’s trustworthy. Data stewardship offers a disciplined approach that brings order to this chaos and enables organizations to transform their data assets into strategic value.
What is Data Stewardship?
Data stewardship is the collection of practices that ensure an organization’s data is accessible, trustworthy, usable, and secure. This approach encompasses every stage of the data lifecycle: creating, preparing, using, storing, archiving, and deleting data are all managed within the framework of corporate data governance principles.
To make the definition more concrete, data stewardship begins with knowing what data an organization possesses, tracking the quality of this data, determining where data assets are located, and monitoring their use. It then ensures that high-quality data is quickly accessible, safe, and trusted. It enforces data policies, business rules, and initiatives around how company data can be used.
According to Gartner’s 2024 Chief Data and Analytics Officer (CDAO) Agenda Survey, 89% of respondents consider effective data and analytics governance essential for fostering business and technology innovation. These findings demonstrate that data stewardship is no longer optional but rather a critical organizational requirement.
The Scope of Data Stewardship
Data stewardship is a comprehensive discipline that encompasses many different aspects of an organization’s data ecosystem. First, it manages data inventory and documentation processes. It records what types of data the organization possesses, the quality of this data, and where it’s located.
The second major scope area is continuous monitoring and assurance of data quality. Quickly identifying data quality issues and ensuring that data assets are usable, safe, and trusted are fundamental goals of this area. Safeguarding the transparency and accuracy of data lineage also plays a critical role within this scope.
The third area involves implementing data policies and business rules. This includes executing regulations on how company data can be used, tracking compliance processes, and managing risks. Policy implementation occurs in areas such as data privacy, data security, and access control.
Finally, data stewardship helps organizations gain competitive advantage from their data. It supports stakeholders, data owners, and business users in creating a data-driven culture. This scope aims not only to protect data assets but also to actively use them to create strategic value.
Who is a Data Steward?
A data steward is the person responsible for carrying out data usage and security policies determined through enterprise data governance initiatives. They serve as a bridge between the IT department and the business side of an organization. Data stewardship responsibilities largely revolve around risk management, information governance, and data security.
Data steward roles require a mix of both technical and business-oriented skills. On the technical side, proficiency in programming, data modeling, data analysis, data management, and database management systems is expected. On the business side, strong communication skills, presentation abilities, technical writing, and expertise in tools like Microsoft Excel are sought.
Data stewards must be strong communicators and collaborators because the role inherently requires working across different functions. They constantly interact with data architects, business intelligence developers, data scientists, business data owners, and data analysts. Some organizations assign this role as a formal title, while others expect employees to assume it in addition to their regular duties.
Data stewards essentially serve as “data ambassadors.” They create connections between the technical team and the user community, with the ultimate goal of empowering users with trusted data. They hold positions of trust within the organization, and their success requires complete confidence from both technical staff and business professionals.
The Difference Between Data Stewardship and Data Governance
Although data stewardship and data governance are often confused with each other, there’s a fundamental distinction between them. Data governance focuses on high-level policies and procedures. It’s the governing body that determines the organization’s data-related objectives, risk tolerance, security requirements, and strategic needs.
Data stewardship, on the other hand, concentrates on coordination and implementation. It ensures that the policies established by data governance are actually put into practice. In other words, while data governance determines “what needs to be done,” data stewardship executes “how to do it.”
The two complement each other but cannot be used interchangeably. While data governance provides the strategic framework, data stewardship manages operational reality. A data stewardship program working in conjunction with the data governance program ensures that policies don’t just remain on paper but are integrated into daily business processes.
Benefits of Data Stewardship
The benefits that data stewardship offers organizations are multidimensional. The first and most obvious benefit is the improvement in data quality and reliability. Through establishing consistent data definitions, maintaining business and technical rules, and monitoring and auditing data reliability, data quality metrics improve.
The second significant benefit is the reduction of errors in data-driven decision-making processes. When users don’t trust the data, they hesitate to leverage it for business decisions or operations. Data of substandard or inconsistent quality can steer organizations in the wrong strategic directions with disastrous business results. Data stewardship minimizes these risks.
The third benefit is that analytics capabilities become more effective. Clean, accessible, and well-documented data increases the success rate of analytics projects. Modernization initiatives like machine learning are entirely dependent on healthy data, and data stewardship provides this foundation.
The fourth benefit is the reduction of data-related security risks. Through implementing data access policies, ensuring only authorized users can access the data they need, and monitoring privacy and integrity controls, data security vulnerabilities are closed.
Finally, it becomes easier for organizations to create competitive advantage from their data. Data stewards help identify and communicate ways that business data can create competitive advantage in the market. They promote strategic use of data and enable more widespread use of data for decision-making throughout the organization.
Data Stewardship Use Cases
Data stewardship can be implemented in different use cases. The first scenario is data quality programs. This includes establishing quality metrics and using quality detection and correction procedures. Organizations often launch data stewardship programs as part of data quality improvement projects.
The second scenario is data lifecycle management and enterprise data operations. This encompasses policies that determine and enforce how long data is retained. All processes of creating, preparing, using, storing, archiving, and deleting data are organized under governance stewardship.
The third scenario is data privacy and risk management. This involves implementing and monitoring controls by working with the data governance program, security team, legal department, and risk function. Regulatory compliance and tracking corporate policies are central to this scenario.
The fourth scenario is enterprise data access policies. The goal is to ensure only authorized users have access to the data they need in the format they need it in. Throughout this process, data confidentiality and integrity are preserved. Data quality tools, including data profiling software, are critical technology components of many data stewardship programs.
Conclusion
Data stewardship is a critical discipline for modern organizations to transform their data assets into reliable, accessible, and strategic value. It offers tangible benefits such as improved data quality, reduced security risks, enhanced decision-making processes, and competitive advantage creation. Data stewards serve as a bridge between technical teams and business users, fostering the creation of a data-driven culture.
According to Gartner’s findings, the vast majority of organizations now view effective data governance as essential for innovation. This indicates that data stewardship will gain even more importance in the coming years. Establishing a data stewardship program in your organization is one of the fundamental steps to unlocking the true potential of your data and achieving your digital transformation goals.
References:
- Gartner Chief Data and Analytics Officer (CDAO) Agenda Survey, 2024