A person responsible for keeping particular data assets accurate, well-documented, and properly used within their part of the organisation.
A person responsible for keeping particular data assets accurate, well-documented, and properly used within their part of the organisation.
Data stewards occupy the execution layer of data governance: they define business rules for data elements, investigate and resolve quality issues, maintain business glossaries and data dictionaries, and ensure compliance with data policies in their domain. Unlike data owners (who hold accountability) and data architects (who define structure), data stewards perform ongoing operational work. In AI development contexts, a data steward may be responsible for reviewing training dataset composition, flagging representativeness issues, and maintaining data provenance records.
Organisations building high-risk AI systems benefit from designating data stewards for each major training dataset; the steward's ongoing work supports the data governance requirements of EU AI Act Annex IV.
Like a head gardener who is accountable for the health of specific flowerbeds — they do not own the garden but are responsible for its day-to-day upkeep, monitoring, and improvement.
A person responsible for keeping particular data assets accurate, well-documented, and properly used within their part of the organisation.
Data stewards occupy the execution layer of data governance: they define business rules for data elements, investigate and resolve quality issues, maintain business glossaries and data dictionaries, and ensure compliance with data policies in their domain. Unlike data owners (who hold accountability) and data architects (who define structure), data stewards perform ongoing operational work. In AI development contexts, a data steward may be responsible for reviewing training dataset composition, flagging representativeness issues, and maintaining data provenance records.
Organisations building high-risk AI systems benefit from designating data stewards for each major training dataset; the steward's ongoing work supports the data governance requirements of EU AI Act Annex IV.