Model 4: Data Steward by System
This approach focuses on taking ownership and stewardship by system. At most companies, systems are defined. As the organization grows, a lack of understanding grows about the data found within systems. The duplicated, redundant data appears in multiple systems. This combines with a lack of master data and source of truth to create challenges. Organizations can propagate data quality of systems in a sustainable way by addressing data issues in the upstream systems at the point of origin. The system-oriented stewardship model is an effective way for an organization to introduce the concept of data stewardship.
Figure 6-5 shows the data governance framework by system, demonstrating that each data steward is aligned with the expertise of the subject area.
Figure 6-5. Data stewardship by system
All systems are identified with storage, processing, and visualization of data.
There could be more than one physical or virtual system with different domains.
As a business puts all its focus on growth, physical system ownership is taken by the IT department themselves. Any change in the system, including data, is owned by IT. This model is the default model in many organizations.
The benefits of system-oriented data stewardship include the following:
• The IT department takes ownership of data improvements when business teams are reluctant to claim ownership or involvement in stewardship because of one or multiple reasons, like bandwidth issues, organization structure, lack of education, or benefits related to data governance and stewardship.
• Data stewardship by system can grow in an organic way or bottom up. This allows IT to start stewardship by involving business through regular education about standards, rules, policies, and procedures as the system grows to meet the needs of the business and to make the data valuable to the business.
• Each system having at least one data steward is an established practice in this model.
The challenges of system-oriented data stewardship include the following:
• IT’s taking a leadership role may create confusion in the business department as to the role of IT as data owners instead of data custodians. This makes any issues related to data IT issues, and business avoids involvement in issue resolution. By default, businesses may not bother about policies and procedures related to data.
• System stewardship by system can lose the big picture as they maintain the integrity of the data only on their system, which comes under the preview of their responsibility.
• System-level data stewardship constrains involvement and communication between business and IT.