Data steward
A person accountable for the day-to-day meaning, quality and appropriate use of a defined set of data. Stewards sit close to the business process that creates the data and turn governance policy into practical decisions.
Why it matters
Governance frameworks fail when nobody has time or authority to resolve the questions they raise: which definition of ‘active customer’ is correct, whether a field can be shared with a supplier, or who fixes a recurring error. Stewardship assigns those questions to named people with the context to answer them.
The role works best when it is part of an existing job with clear scope, escalation routes to a data owner, and tooling that shows the steward where their data is used and where it is failing.
In practice
For example, a UK insurer might appoint a claims operations lead as steward for claims data. They approve changes to claim status definitions, review a weekly quality report and decide, with the data protection officer, which claims fields can be used to train a triage model.
Where Rodan fits
Rodan helps define ownership and stewardship alongside the platforms it builds, so controls are operated rather than documented. The Data Governance Toolkit includes ownership as a scored domain.