Data Stewardship: The engine of Data Governance and Data Quality Improvement

When designing and implementing a data governance framework, one of the key activities is to define the roles required to ensure that data is managed as an asset, including those roles which help to tackle the data quality problems that any governance programme will uncover and seek to fix.   As governance is a multi-faceted activity, embracing data management, business process improvement, organizational culture change and IT, many different roles will be needed.  These include the need for a data champion at executive level who will promote the importance of data governance and data quality to senior managers, a data governance lead who owns the overall framework and coordinates all activities to ensure the programme delivers its promised benefits, data owners, based in the business, who are accountable for defined data domains and who specify and enforce the policies and controls on the data they manage, and IT and data quality analysts and specialists who are able to quantify the scope and scale of data quality problems, design and implement improvement activities to address them, and are able to apply data quality tools as part of their armoury.    

All the above roles are essential and have an important part to play in ensuring data governance and data quality improvement become part of the fabric of any organization.  But there is one role which is critical to the success of any data governance and / or data quality initiative.  That role is that of a data steward.  In my experience of designing, implementing and reviewing both governance and quality programmes, whether or not they are successful usually critically depends on whether data stewards are in place and if they are in place, their effectiveness in the role.  Without embedded data stewardship, all too often initiatives quickly mutate into talking shops, where people ponder fixing data problems but do not have the time, skills or motivation to deliver the improvements required.   This can cause many well-intentioned governance and quality programmes to fail to meet expectations.  For example, in a recent Experian survey published in April 2024 which surveyed 250 data professionals in the UK and Ireland, 84% stated that data governance was ‘the backbone of effective data management’.  Despite this, only 15% stated that their data governance efforts are ‘fully meeting expectations’ with the remaining 85% conceding that their endeavours are only ‘partly meeting expectations’ or ‘falling short’. [1]

Although not explicitly stated in the survey report, from my own experience in working with many organisations a critical determinant of success or failure will always be the effectiveness of the data stewardship function.  Whereas many governance programmes appoint data owners who act as champions for the data they are responsible for, they are usually middle or senior managers who have many other responsibilities and so are only able to dedicate limited time to their role.  Although they usually have a strong business understanding of how their data is used, they are often not familiar with the detailed problems and issues that may arise.  To tackle these requires people who are subject matter experts in the data, and who have the skills, time and motivation to drive up the quality and value of their data.  These people are the data stewards.  They are the beating heart of governance and quality who turn good intentions into real and measurable data advances and business improvement. 

Why is a data steward so critical to success?  As the name suggests a steward is someone whose role is to ‘manage the property of another.’ [2]  A data steward is therefore someone who has a key responsibility to manage a defined sub-set of the data assets in the organization in which he / she is employed.  The best data stewards are normally the ‘go to’ business experts in the data area they are responsible for, whether customer data, product data, financial data, or other data types.  They perform the day to day curation of the data which includes:

• Monitoring their data against defined business and data quality rules to ensure it is fit for purpose, for example through developing and maintaining data quality dashboards.
• Where data is not fit for purpose, leading and coordinating data improvement activities. Data stewards cannot improve data on their own.  They need to engage with data producers, data consumers and other data stakeholders to drive up the quality and general usefulness of their data.  Often they will be the leaders of improvement activities via working groups, project teams etc.
• Working with the data owner to ensure that the policies and controls around the data are effectively enforced and suggesting changes and enhancements where required.
• Maintaining a business glossary and data catalog entries for their data to ensure the metadata is well maintained and is usable by its consumers.
• Liaising closely with IT specialists to ensure that the applications and systems that process the data are adhering to policies and enhancing and not diminishing data quality and access.
• Working with other roles, including other data stewards, across the organization, to create a stewardship community, encouraging reuse of solutions, and sharing best practices.

As the totality of the above roles indicate, the best data stewards have multiple skills encompassing data management expertise, business understanding, negotiation and influencing skills, change and project management etc.  Moreover, in many organisations data stewards are often part time, combining this role with another job so it is vital that they also have excellent prioritization skills which will enable them to focus on the main data improvements that will generate the most business benefit. 

Without committed and skilled data stewards, no data governance or data quality initiative can deliver the benefits anticipated.  Data owners do not have the bandwidth (and often data skills) to drive change.  On the other hand, many will argue that data quality projects can, and sometimes do, deliver benefits in the short term even if data stewards are not formally in place.  When this is the case they are often initiated and led by IT.  But sustaining the gains is never easy without effective stewardship as no one has the formal responsibility for ongoing data monitoring or further improvement, and as we all know, data quality improvement is a continuous business process, not a one-off project with a finite end.  

In any governance or quality initiative, having data stewards at the vanguard of change is the best guarantee of success. They are truly in the engine room, driving and delivering real and measurable progress.  Without an engine, things inevitably slow down and eventually stop.  Invest in data stewardship and the people who deliver it to ensure your organization reaps the benefits of better data. 

[1] Cited in ‘Data Governance:  From afterthought to competitive advantage’, Experian, April 2024

[2] Data Management Book of Knowledge’, DAMA International