Who Are Data Stewards Why Does Data Stewardship Matter

Businesses are becoming more and more aware of the need of using data to inform both short- and long-term strategic choices. Finding useful uses for this data is even more urgent due to the growth in the number and variety of data that a company processes.Businesses have turned to data governance and data stewardship as essential components of their overall data management strategy to guarantee they are making the greatest use of all available resources. These fundamental data ownership tasks are being transferred to data professionals, such as data stewards who manage data stewardship inside an organization.

What is data stewardship?

Making organizational data accessible, consistent, useable, and safe is the main goal of data stewardship. Data stewardship is the application of the policies and procedures that are defined by data governance to assure compliance and enhance the quality of the data. Users across the organization have access to the data they require in accessible formats because of data stewardship. It includes the full data lifecycle, including data collection, transformation, use, storage, archiving, and deletion. In fact, data stewardship is in charge of managing every aspect of this cycle. This involves both technically-focused tasks like data gathering, cataloging, and inventorying and culturally-focused ones like identifying data’s strategic applications.

Why is data stewardship important?

To make wise choices, businesses require reliable data. Data quality is directly impacted by data governance. Results are affected if you are using a data set that is either incomplete or of poor quality. For instance, a business analyst can speculate that a new market segment has emerged as a result of an increase in the number of new users that fit a certain demographic. What if, however, each subscription is being duplicated as a result of an internal system fault, making the number of subscriptions half what is recorded in the documents they maintain? Now, the business analyst is making inaccurate judgments on where to concentrate sales and marketing efforts. Even worse, as time passes, staff members will quit relying on the poor data quality in your company to manage their operations. To guarantee that the data is accessible, precise, dependable, and trusted by the firm, data stewardship is essential. Business users don’t have to worry about whether the intelligence they are creating draws on all accessible data or whether there are duplicates in the data set since data stewardship focuses on maintaining data standards. Data stewards, on the other hand, concentrate on the procedures that make organizational data as comprehensive and accurate as possible, while the former concentrate on adapting their tactics in light of their findings

What advantages can data stewardship offer?

Programs for data stewardship benefit companies in a variety of ways. A data stewardship program has the following advantages:

-more frequent use of data to support decisions

-higher data quality

-better data documentation

-clearer, more precise data policies and processes

-more efficient and effective analytics programs

-decreased risks associated with data-related security and privacy requirements, increased compliance with data-related legislation, and fewer mistakes in processes and choices that are data-driven

-Consistent application of data management as a tool

-Efficient data mapping throughout systems and technologies

-Reduced expenditures related to the switch to service-oriented architecture (SOA)

Conclusion

Appointing Data Stewards is something that organizations trying to enhance data quality must think about. Organizations must adopt a culture that regards data as a competitive advantage rather than a necessary evil if they are to succeed with data stewardship, and they must also establish precise objectives for raising the importance of data has

See also

Do you want to get practical skills to work in cybersecurity or advance your career? Enrol in MCSI Bootcamps