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<h2 id="data-steward-responsibilities">Data steward responsibilities</h2> <p>A data steward ensures that each assigned data element: </p> <ol><li>Has clear and unambiguous <a href="/facts/Data_element_definition/Gy5xWw64">data element definition</a></li> <li>Does not conflict with other data elements in the metadata registry (removes duplicates, overlap etc.)</li> <li>Has clear enumerated value definitions if it is of type <a href="/facts/Code_(metadata)/pPaQPLhj">Code</a></li> <li>Is still being used (remove unused data elements)</li> <li>Is being used consistently in various computer systems</li> <li>Is being used, fit for purpose = Data Fitness</li> <li>Has adequate documentation on appropriate usage and notes</li> <li>Documents the origin and sources of authority on each metadata element</li> <li>Is protected against unauthorised access or change</li></ol> <p>Responsibilities of data stewards vary between different organisations and institutions. For example, at Delft University of Technology, data stewards are perceived as the first contact point for any questions related to research data. They also have subject-specific background allowing them to easily connect with researchers and to contextualise data management problems to take into account disciplinary practices.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:4" href="#fn:4"><sup>4</sup></a> </p> <h2 id="types-of-data-stewards">Types of data stewards</h2> <p>Depending on the set of data stewardship responsibilities assigned to an individual, there are 4 types (or dimensions of responsibility) of data stewards typically found within an organization: </p> <ol><li>Data object data steward - responsible for managing reference data and attributes of one business data entity</li> <li>Business data steward - responsible for managing critical data, both reference and transactional, created or used by one business function. The data steward may also serve as a liaison between the organization's data users and technical teams, helping to bridge the gap between business needs and technical requirements. They may also play a role in educating others within the organization about best practices for data management, and advocating for data-driven decision-making.</li> <li>Process data steward - responsible for managing data across one business process</li> <li>System data steward - responsible for managing data for at least one IT system<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:5" href="#fn:5"><sup>5</sup></a></li></ol> <h2 id="benefits-of-data-stewardship">Benefits of data stewardship</h2> <p>Systematic data stewardship can foster: </p> <ol><li>Faster analysis</li> <li>Consistent use of data management resources</li> <li>Easy mapping of data between computer systems and exchange documents</li> <li>Lower costs associated with migration to (for example) <a href="/facts/Service_Oriented_Architecture/g8krR0dk">Service Oriented Architecture</a> (SOA)</li> <li>Mitigation of data risk</li> <li>Better control of dangers associated with privacy, legal, errors, etc.</li></ol> <p>Assignment of each data element to a person sometimes seems like an unimportant process. But multiple groups[<i>which?</i>] have found that users have greater trust and usage rates in systems where they can contact a person with questions on each data element. </p> <h2 id="examples">Examples</h2> <p><a href="/facts/Delft_University_of_Technology/wtPV7UmG">Delft University of Technology (TU Delft)</a> offers an example of data stewardship implementation at a research institution. In 2017 the Data Stewardship Project was initiated at TU Delft to address research data management needs in a disciplinary manner across the whole campus.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:6" href="#fn:6"><sup>6</sup></a> Dedicated data stewards with subject-specific background were appointed at every TU Delft faculty to support researchers with data management questions and to act as a linking point with the other institutional support services. The project is coordinated centrally by <a href="/facts/TU_Delft_Library/S2na2Dhf">TU Delft Library</a>, and it has its own website,<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:7" href="#fn:7"><sup>7</sup></a> blog<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:8" href="#fn:8"><sup>8</sup></a> and a YouTube channel.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:9" href="#fn:9"><sup>9</sup></a> </p><p>The <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20061002020733/http://www.epa.gov/edr/">[1]</a><a href="/facts/United_States_Environmental_Protection_Agency/ghI985SI">EPA</a> metadata registry furnishes an example of data stewardship. Note that each data element therein has a "POC" (point of contact). </p><p>In 2023, <a href="/facts/ETH_Zurich/IxHAFGUU">ETH Zurich</a> launched the Data Stewardship Network (DSN) to facilitate collaboration among employees engaged in data management, analysis, and code development across research groups. The DSN serves as a platform for networking and knowledge exchange, aiming to professionalize the role of data stewards who support research data management and reproducible workflows. Established by the team for Research Data Management and Digital Curation at the <a href="/facts/ETH_Library/uJVHvgFE">ETH Library</a>, the DSN collaborates with Scientific IT Services to provide expertise in areas such as storage infrastructure and reproducible workflows.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:10" href="#fn:10"><sup>10</sup></a> </p> <h2 id="data-stewardship-applications">Data stewardship applications</h2> <p>A new market for data governance applications is emerging, one in which both technical and business staff — stewards — manage policies. These new applications, like previous generations, deliver a strong business glossary capability, but they do not stop there. </p><p>Information stewardship applications are business solutions used by business users acting in the role of information steward (interpreting and enforcing information governance policy, for example). These developing solutions represent, for the most part, an amalgam of a number of disparate, previously IT-centric tools already on the market, but are organized and presented in such a way that information stewards (a business role) can support the work of information policy enforcement as part of their normal, business-centric, day-to-day work in a range of use cases. </p><p>The initial push for the formation of this new category of packaged software came from operational use cases — that is, use of business data in and between transactional and operational business applications. This is where most of the master data management efforts are undertaken in organizations. However, there is also now a faster-growing interest in the new <a href="/facts/Data_lake/0CA7G5k0">data lake</a> arena for more analytical use cases.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:11" href="#fn:11"><sup>11</sup></a> </p> <h2 id="see-also">See also</h2> <ul><li><a href="/facts/Metadata/qt35z79C">Metadata</a></li> <li><a href="/facts/Metadata_registry/DxuCj49r">Metadata registry</a></li> <li><a href="/facts/Data_curation/CXX8JQNU">Data curation</a></li> <li><a href="/facts/Data_element/jtyoAIAd">Data element</a></li> <li><a href="/facts/Data_element_definition/Gy5xWw64">Data element definition</a></li> <li><a href="/facts/Data_Governance/nt0J5rgc">Data Governance</a></li> <li><a href="/facts/Representation_term/clVjSMY5">Representation term</a></li> <li><a href="/facts/ISO%2fIEC_11179/vPsvIhuN">ISO/IEC 11179</a></li></ul> <h2 id="further-reading">Further reading</h2> <ul><li>Plotkin, David (31 October 2020). <i>Data Stewardship: An Actionable Guide to Effective Data Management and Data Governance</i> (2 ed.). Morgan Kaufmann. <a href="/facts/ISBN_(identifier)/15AdSPa9">ISBN</a> 978-0128221327. <a href="/facts/OCLC_(identifier)/Yqad8waq">OCLC</a> <a href="https://search.worldcat.org/oclc/1197764106">1197764106</a>.</li> <li>Smallwood, Robert F. (2019). <i>Information governance : concepts, strategies and best practices</i> (2 ed.). John Wiley and Sons, inc. <a href="/facts/ISBN_(identifier)/15AdSPa9">ISBN</a> 9781119491446. <a href="/facts/OCLC_(identifier)/Yqad8waq">OCLC</a> <a href="https://search.worldcat.org/oclc/1097466578">1097466578</a>.</li> <li>Marco, David; Jennings, Michael (2004). <i>Universal Meta Data Models</i>. Wiley. pp. 93–94. <a href="/facts/ISBN_(identifier)/15AdSPa9">ISBN</a> 9780471081777. <a href="/facts/OCLC_(identifier)/Yqad8waq">OCLC</a> <a href="https://search.worldcat.org/oclc/54978224">54978224</a>.</li> <li><i>Metadata Solution</i> by Adrinne Tannenbaum, Addison Wesley, 2002, page 412</li> <li><i>Building and Managing the Meta Data Repository</i>, by David Marco, Wiley, 2000, pages 61–62</li> <li><i>The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit</i>, by <a href="/facts/Ralph_Kimball/obMfhEK5">Ralph Kimball</a> et. el., Wiley, 1998, also briefly mentions the role of data steward in the context of data warehouse project management on page 70.</li> <li><i>Developing Geospatial Intelligence Stewardship for Multinational Operations</i>, by Jeff Thomas, US Army Command General Staff College, 2010, www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a524227.pdf.</li></ul> <h2 id="references">References</h2> <ol> <li id="fn:1"><p>Cramer, Jonathan James (March 5, 2019). "6 Key Responsibility of the Invaluable Data Steward". DNB. Archived from the original on March 28, 2019. Retrieved November 11, 2022. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190328202931/https://www.dnb.com/perspectives/master-data/6-key-responsibilities-of-data-stewards.html" target="_blank">https://web.archive.org/web/20190328202931/https://www.dnb.com/perspectives/master-data/6-key-responsibilities-of-data-stewards.html</a> <a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:2"><p>Cramer, Jonathan James (March 5, 2019). "6 Key Responsibility of the Invaluable Data Steward". DNB. Archived from the original on March 28, 2019. Retrieved November 11, 2022. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190328202931/https://www.dnb.com/perspectives/master-data/6-key-responsibilities-of-data-stewards.html" target="_blank">https://web.archive.org/web/20190328202931/https://www.dnb.com/perspectives/master-data/6-key-responsibilities-of-data-stewards.html</a> <a href="#fnref:2" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:3"><p>"What is Data Stewardship? Its Importance, Benefits, Programs and more". Simplilearn. November 30, 2021. Archived from the original on January 21, 2022. Retrieved November 11, 2022. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20220121022346/https://www.simplilearn.com/what-is-data-stewardship-article" target="_blank">https://web.archive.org/web/20220121022346/https://www.simplilearn.com/what-is-data-stewardship-article</a> <a href="#fnref:3" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:4"><p>NewMedia Centre (2018-05-16), 1 Data Stewardship at the TU Delft V2, archived from the original on 2021-12-19, retrieved 2018-06-12 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSRocFr6vTM" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSRocFr6vTM</a> <a href="#fnref:4" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:5"><p>"Understanding the different types of a data steward - LightsOnData". LightsOnData. 2018-06-13. Retrieved 2018-06-20. <a href="http://www.lightsondata.com/understanding-data-stewardship-types/" target="_blank">http://www.lightsondata.com/understanding-data-stewardship-types/</a> <a href="#fnref:5" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:6"><p>Teperek, Marta; Cruz, Maria J.; Verbakel, Ellen; Böhmer, Jasmin K.; Dunning, Alastair (2018-01-22). "Data Stewardship – addressing disciplinary data management needs". Open Science Framework. doi:10.17605/OSF.IO/MJK9T. S2CID 59344239. <a href="https://osf.io/mjk9t/" target="_blank">https://osf.io/mjk9t/</a> <a href="#fnref:6" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:7"><p>"Data Stewardship". TU Delft. Archived from the original on 2018-06-12. Retrieved 2018-06-12. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180612163203/https://www.tudelft.nl/en/library/current-topics/research-data-management/research-data-management/data-stewardship/" target="_blank">https://web.archive.org/web/20180612163203/https://www.tudelft.nl/en/library/current-topics/research-data-management/research-data-management/data-stewardship/</a> <a href="#fnref:7" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:8"><p>"Data Stewardship". Open Working. 2018-02-13. Retrieved 2018-06-12. <a href="https://openworking.wordpress.com/data-stewardship/" target="_blank">https://openworking.wordpress.com/data-stewardship/</a> <a href="#fnref:8" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:9"><p>"Data Stewardship TU Delft". YouTube. Retrieved 2018-06-12. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpxLeiN6muCtOv45Bcqhowg/videos" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpxLeiN6muCtOv45Bcqhowg/videos</a> <a href="#fnref:9" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:10"><p>"Launch of the Data Stewardship Network at ETH Zurich". ethz.ch. 2023-01-18. Retrieved 2024-04-15. <a href="https://ethz.ch/staffnet/en/news-and-events/internal-news/archive/2023/01/start-des-data-stewardship-netzwerks-an-der-eth-zuerich.html" target="_blank">https://ethz.ch/staffnet/en/news-and-events/internal-news/archive/2023/01/start-des-data-stewardship-netzwerks-an-der-eth-zuerich.html</a> <a href="#fnref:10" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:11"><p>De Simoni, Guido (15 April 2016). "Market Guide for Information Stewardship Applications". Gartner. <a href="https://www.gartner.com/doc/3284717" target="_blank">https://www.gartner.com/doc/3284717</a> <a href="#fnref:11" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> </ol>