An essential role in any data-driven organization, a data steward is expected to manage and protect valuable data resources while ensuring that the integrity of the data remains intact. A steward must ensure that the data is useful to the company and meets its business objectives. Data stewards are also responsible for monitoring the data that goes in and out of an organization.
One big misconception is that being a data steward is a distinct position. In reality, it is a responsibility that can be undertaken by anyone who has a grasp of data management.
Therefore, data stewards are individuals responsible for ensuring that the data is accessible, consistent, usable, and secure - at any point in time. They are expected to monitor the entire data lifecycle: collecting, categorizing, using, storing, archiving, and even deleting data.
There are three types of data stewards:
This article will focus on the specific responsibilities data stewards are tasked with, their skills, and how they can get certified.
What Does a Data Steward Do?
Data stewards are essentially the gatekeepers of an organization's data. That means that they serve as a reference point for anyone that needs access to the data, has questions about it, or wants to store some of it.
Data stewards are asked about the relevancy of particular data, how to improve the quality of the data, where it can be stored, and how long it needs to be stored.
Here are a few more responsibilities:
What Skills Are Necessary to Become a Data Steward?
Handling an organization's data is a huge undertaking. Although data stewardship is not a separate role within an organization, it typically requires an individual who has two to five years of experience with data management.
Although no formal degrees in data stewardship are available, you can enroll in certification courses to accelerate your career. If you aspire to data stewardship, you will be expected to have a strong foundation with a bachelor's degree in data science or a related subject.
That said, data stewardship demands an elaborate set of skills from an individual. Some of them include:
Data Stewardship for Business
One of the ways that data stewardship is especially advantageous to businesses is that it allows them to receive more of their data and witness an increase in its quality. They're required to analyze data, identify pain points and glitches, and develop solutions to solve these issues. Therefore, the quality of the data is significantly improved.
Besides, it allows companies to have a dedicated point of contact to help them with all their data-related issues. This individual can direct the data governance strategies and streamline processes. The role grants organizations control over their data. It mitigates the process of data management through advanced legal and ethical risk control and makes sure that the data is in line with changing compliance requirements.
As a practice, it ensures productivity and streamlines processes. It facilitates the easy locating of data management areas and data sources. It also prevents the creation of data swamps within the company's database. Instead, it leads to creating dedicated databases like data warehouses and data lakes.
It also keeps the overhead costs low because the poor organization of data takes a toll on its management, resulting in unnecessary expenditure. And it saves funds that would otherwise be spent on other management activities. All in all, data stewardship helps stakeholders make accurate data-driven decisions which, in return, gives a better ROI.