In a data-driven organisation with robust data governance, data stewards play a pivotal role in ensuring the quality and security of data across internal processes.

They are responsible for ensuring that the data collected by the company is accurate, secure and user-friendly. They also oversee the management and clear definition of each data element so that information remains consistent and reliable throughout the organisation.

 In other words, a data steward acts like a librarian. Rather than tracking books, they organise and maintain data, ensuring it is properly labelled, easy to find and understandable for those who use it.

Similar to a referee deciding whether a football player deserves a red card after a foul, when there is a conflict over how data rules should be applied, different teams within the organisation may have their own point of view. In such cases, the data steward acts as a neutral decision-maker, ensuring that agreed governance rules are applied fairly and consistently.

In recent years, the role of the data steward has attracted increasing attention from organisational leadership. As businesses recognise the value of data as a strategic asset, leaders have come to understand that robust data stewardship is vital for establishing and maintaining an effective data governance framework.

In this article, we will have a closer look at the role of the data steward, their daily tasks, and the potential challenges of the position.

The Core Responsibilities of a Data Steward: Safeguarding Quality and Trust

As mentioned above, the data steward plays a key role in designing the organisation's data governance. They are notably responsible for managing data quality by ensuring the accuracy, completeness and consistency of data collected by the company.

In this context, the data steward maintains data definitions and business glossaries to ensure consistency and clarity throughout the organisation. They achieve this through the use of metadata. Metadata is defined as "data about data" — information that describes and provides context for data, such as its source, format, creation date or business meaning.

A data steward also ensures that the use of data is fully aligned with governance policies and external regulatory requirements, such as the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation).

Data stewards foster collaboration by bringing together business and IT stakeholders. This collaborative role enables them to resolve conflicts and clarify ambiguities, ensuring that everyone works with a shared understanding of the data.

Through their daily tasks, data stewards play a crucial role in building confidence in how data is managed within the organisation. By ensuring the accuracy, consistency and proper use of data, they strengthen trust in information and contribute directly to better, more reliable decision-making.

Navigating the Challenges of Data Stewardship

As Peter Parker’s uncle famously said, "With great power comes great responsibility." Similarly, managing data presents its own set of challenges.

 One of the first hurdles that springs to mind is the resistance to change from teams and leadership. Implementing a data strategy is never easy and requires strong commitment to collaboration, adoption of new working methods and learning of new daily processes. Without this willingness to adapt, even the most well-designed data governance framework can struggle to gain traction.

On a more personal level, a data steward may struggle to keep pace with the rapid growth and increasing complexity of data.

As datasets expand and evolve from diverse sources, maintaining accuracy, consistency and clarity can become difficult, putting additional pressure on the steward to manage, organise and govern information effectively.

However, this challenge can be mitigated by leveraging automation, data management tools, and clear governance processes to help stewards keep up with growing and increasingly complex datasets.

The Future of Data Stewardship: Evolving Roles in a Data-Driven World

In short, an excellent data steward combines meticulous attention to detail with strong problem-solving skills, addressing emerging challenges and fostering collaboration across teams.

Thanks to their strong understanding of business processes and technical data management, they are also effective communicators and can act as mediators between departments.

These skills will become increasingly important for data stewards as they face multiple future challenges. The rising demand for effective data management means there are higher expectations for accuracy, consistency and timely decision-making.

At the same time, the development of self-service tools is automating some of the routine tasks traditionally handled by data stewards.

Furthermore, emerging opportunities from AI models and cloud platforms mean that organisations must continue to invest in data stewardship as a core part of their data strategy to ensure they can maintain control of, and build trust and value in, their growing data assets.

In conclusion, within a data-driven organisation, data stewards act as guardians of trust, ensuring that employees and teams can rely on accurate, consistent and well-managed data to improve internal processes and make better decisions.