Question

Do organizations want cultures that foster Data Owners or Data Stewards - and why?

Answer 1

First of all we need to understand that what are Data Owners and Data Stewards.

Data Owners will be senior people within the organisation who have signed up to be accountable for the quality of a defined dataset (one or more). For example, the orgnaisation have the Minance Director as the Data Owner for marketing data in the organisation. It should be undertaken by senior individuals. However, due to their postion and work pressure, they are unlikely to have the time to be involved in data quality activities on a day-to-day basis. That's why we have data steward.

A Data Steward is responsible for the management and for the quality of a defined dataset on day-to-day basis in the organization. Big organisations expect data stewards to expertly handle all things not only related to data processing and data guidelines but also need to be closely aligned to the consumers of the master data, where data entry, usage, and quality control can be most influenced.

Now, the actual question that do organizations want cultures that foster Data Owners or Data Stewards.

Yes, organizations want cultures that foster Data Owners or Data Stewards.

The reason is-

In general sense, both act as Data Governance.

1) Typically, if an organization is cognizant of the data it captures, stores and uses, it is only aware of the deficiencies of that data and not the many ways that data can be turned into valuable information. Instituting a data governance program will provide a company with a central focus for identifying and controlling the collection, storage and disposition of information resources.

2) Data quality standards have been mandated by the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act. In order to comply with tha act we need Data Stewards.

3) Information quality is a measure of how well the business information demand is met. It is the ability to get the right data, to the right people, in the right place, at the right time, at the right cost, so they can make the right decisions, and take the right actions. Data resource quality is a measure of how well the data resource supports the current and future business information demand, providing the right data to support information quality and the role of data stewards includes attention to the quality of the data for the data under their stewardship.

NOTE: Data Owners and Data stewards are not interchangeable, Owners have power, control and have senior position but Stewards manage on behalf of the owner. The Data Owner is accountable for the activities and the Data Steward is responsible for those activities on a day to day basis.

The requirement of Data Owner or Data Steward depends on the size of the organisation. Large organisations probably need both the roles. If the organisation don't have a lot of staff, then it don't require both.