A data steward is a member of your team who is responsible for overseeing the management and analysis of your data. There are multiple streams of data and data systems within a business, all coming from various sources. Having them sitting in disparate spreadsheets or applications doesn’t necessary serve the business. This is where the data steward comes in to perform an organisational and management function.
Data stewards are responsible for implementing data administrative procedures and building systems for all data assets used in the organisation. These roles include the following:
- Defining the data, first and foremost, to avoid misuse or conflicts
- Maintaining the quality of data
- Optimising workflows using business data
- Carefully monitoring data usage
- Assisting teams with compliance, ensuring it is always met
- Educating various teams about data management throughout the organisation.
Best Practices For Hiring A Data Steward
Employing a data steward in your organisation benefits the business by having improved data, updated data security, accurate data governance, systems and documentation. There are a few things that your organisation will need to consider.
- Be open to allowing the data steward to access all data and systems
- Allow the data steward to have support from higher management as well as the teams that work with the data
- Define who the data steward reports to
- Educate the data steward about the culture of your organisation.
The data steward is usually the trusted source for everything related to data. They are the thought leaders who are responsible for ensuring data quality, staying on top of trends, keeping the team in the loop, and advocating for the proper use of data. They will also be in charge of data laws and how the business responds to these.
There are many different levels roles of data stewardship:
- Data object data steward who is responsible for managing reference data
- Business data steward who is responsible for handling critical data
- Process data steward who is responsible for managing data across organisational systems and processes
- Systems data steward who is responsible for data relating to IT.
Having a data steward on your team will ensure that correct systems are in place to manage and organise your data so that it can be used to make better business decisions.
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Or you can check out our range of data courses here.
