Data stewardship is a multi-faceted function which places the ultimate organizational responsibilities for data quality. Frequently, people refer to a data steward, as though a single person can perform all the activities. While a single person or group of people may ultimately be responsible for data quality, the stewardship functions are carried out by several people. The Zachman Framework perspectives are useful for determining the organizational responsibilities for different aspects of data stewardship.
The planner perspective provides an enterprise view. In this view, the major subjects of the organization are identified. One way of identifying the major subjects is to bring together business people from each of the major functional areas of the company so that the major subjects can be identified. A typical list of major subjects would include customers, products, competitors, facilities, human resources, materials, etc. Agreement on the list of major subjects, and the scope and definition of each, needs to be gained at an enterprise level. The business people who were instrumental in defining the major subject areas can form the nucleus of a stewardship council which would provide an enterprise view toward the data.
In addition to defining the subjects and their content, this council would also set the policies concerning the management of data as an enterprise resource. These policies would address data creation, maintenance, dissemination (including security) and disposition from a generic viewpoint, with the responsibility for executing the policies for individual data elements or subjects being under the control of the appropriate people.
In the owner perspective, the entities and attributes within each subject area are identified and defined from a business perspective. The relationships between pairs of entities and the domain of business values are also defined in the owner perspective. To a large extent, the work performed in this perspective is done within individual subject areas. Hence, it is appropriate to designate, for each subject area, a business person as the data steward to oversee the development of the owner perspective. The stewardship council would provide guidance for matters involving multiple subject areas or if consensus cannot be reached on the subject area within which an entity belongs.
Data analysts within data administration should be responsible for developing the (system) data model which governs the technical implementation of the business model. Data administration defines the overall naming standards and, therefore, may need to rename some of the entities for representation within the physical databases. Interaction with the business people is warranted to ensure that the resultant model is semantically consistent with the business model. If discrepancies arise, both parties need to be part of the resolution.
Once the system model is defined by the data analyst, a person within database administration must define the physical tables which preserve the integrity of the system model and meet the designated performance requirements. This is done in the builder view.
In the builder view, physical databases and tables are defined. The technical model used in this view may differ from the system model because of access or performance considerations. As with other views, some collaboration may be needed between data administration and database administration. Database administration needs to ensure that the referential integrity implied in the system model is preserved. The database administrator is then ready to create the physical databases and tables in the subcontractor view.
The physical databases are created by database administration in the subcontractor view. With modern repositories and CASE tools, consistency with the builder view is easy to guarantee, as the creation of the physical environment can be automated. The product of the process is the actual database which is eventually populated.
The final product is the set of populated tables. Data for these tables is often provided by individuals, and these individuals need to be accountable for the data entered.
The data stewardship roles exist to ensure the integrity of the product--the populated databases and tables. Without this integrity, the value of any database is very limited. Throughout the process, the stewardship functions are performed by different people. First, a group of people defines the major subjects of interest. These people need to have an enterprise-wide business perspective. Then the contents of each subject area of interest are defined by a person with a specific business perspective. The result is translated into an electronic representation of the business by a person with business and data analysis skills who applies information resource management principles to make the transformation. Finally, a person with technical database skills defines and creates the physical tables.
These functions are designed to help ensure that the data entered meets the enterprise needs. However, unless the person entering the data is also concerned with the data quality, the data may pass all the electronic validation rules and still be invalid.
This column focuses on the data stewardship responsibilities within the data dimension of the Zachman Framework. The steward also addresses the other dimensions. For example, the processes which are defined for ensuring the data quality are declared within the process dimension, the physical distribution of the data is declared within the locations dimension, the security rules are declared within the people dimension, the currency requirement and retention rules are declared within the times dimension, and the governing business rules are declared within the motivations column.
Jonathan G. Geiger is executive vice president at Intelligent Solutions, Inc. Geiger has been involved in many corporate information factory and customer relationship management projects within the utility, telecommunications, manufacturing, education, chemical, financial and retail industries. In his more than three decades as a practitioner and consultant, Geiger has managed or performed work in virtually every aspect of information management. He has authored or co-authored numerous articles and three books, presents frequently at national and international conferences, and teaches several public seminars. Geiger may be reached at JGeiger@IntelSols.com.
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