Data Stewards Improve Data Utilization with Fresh Approaches

The organization’s data governance plan establishes the rules for data usage and security, which are then enforced by a data steward. Data stewards provide a blend of data science, engineering, and communication abilities to work with teams throughout the organization and promote fresh approaches to improve data utilization. Being a point of contact between the business-focused and IT sides of the organization is one of the data steward’s most important contributions. In order to effectively cooperate with many stakeholders, they must not only be knowledgeable about the technical elements of data management but also display good interpersonal skills.

Functions of Data Steward

The whole data lifecycle is covered by the data steward, who makes sure that protocols are followed and standards are upheld at every turn. Maintaining correct data history, which is an audit record of each data point’s origin, user interactions, transformations, and migrations throughout the data pipeline, is a key aspect. Data stewards may validate compliance throughout the data’s lifespan and track the origin of problems with the aid of accurate data lineage.

Data stewards manage a wide range of duties in addition to defining data lineage, including:

-Data cataloging: Understanding the data that is accessible, including its source, kind, and format, is essential for good data management. Data stewards will create an inventory of the data across the company and continuously update it to account for new sources using methods such as data profiling. Effective data monitoring techniques are therefore made possible.

-Data Monitoring: It is the duty of data stewards to make sure that all users access and utilize data in accordance with internal and external policies. To detect possible fraud and misuse among the tens of thousands of daily contacts that occur within a business, this degree of visibility necessitates an efficient monitoring.

-Data Advocacy: In addition to bringing data in front of business users, data stewards are also charged with actively promoting strategic data uses and working with teams to come up with novel methods to incorporate data into processes.

-Data Security: Data stewards apply access controls and security measures to make sure that only the right stakeholders have access to sensitive data. Additionally, they use encryption and other security measures to guarantee that all data is safe from theft or manipulation.

Organizations also give strict priority to data rules. Data stewards take an active role in ensuring that their businesses agree to the most recent regulations and legislation regarding the use, storage, and protection of data.

Examples of Data Steward

Usually, data stewards are not in charge of guaranteeing that data governance policies are followed throughout the whole organization. As can be seen in the following cases, a company may have a number of data stewards who are divided into groups according to the nature of their duties.

1.Domain Data Steward

The reference data and characteristics for a business data entity must be maintained by domain data stewards. Customer data is a typical domain. Contact details, financial information, order history, and other important data are managed for all customer records in the organization by customer data stewards. To manage and curate all significant data, domain data stewards frequently need to collaborate across departments.

2.Business Data Steward

For one business function, business data stewards supervise all important reference and transaction data. The business functions of sales and marketing are two main examples. Business data stewards seek for compliance while optimizing the use of data for their business function. Because the success of their job is mirrored in the success of the business function, it is simpler to link ROI to business data stewards.

3.System Data Steward

Data utilized in one or more IT systems is under the control of system data stewards. The management of a business data warehouse is a typical responsibility. While the stewards in the previous two cases are primarily concerned with how human users are engaging with the data, these stewards are highly focused on the data lifecycle within their systems and how this data is used by other applications.

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