What is data stewardship?

About data stewardship

Data stewardship means taking care of data at every stage of its use: through collection, preparation, storage, analysis and archive or deletion. It helps ensure that data is accurate, secure, understandable and is handled responsibly.

It also means considering the people affected by the collection and use of data. This includes respecting their privacy and interests, using data for the appropriate purpose, and being accountable for decisions about it.

As research uses larger and more complex datasets, there is a growing need for clear responsibility for their quality, protection and appropriate use. Data stewardship brings these responsibilities together. This is particularly important when sensitive health and administrative data are used in Trusted Research Environments (TREs).

What does data stewardship involve?

Data needs ongoing attention to remain reliable and useful. Anyone using a dataset needs to understand what it contains, where it came from and whether any gaps or limitations could affect its interpretation.

Practical data stewardship activities include:

• Recording what data means, how it was collected and what changes have been made.

• Checking data for errors, missing information and inconsistencies.

• Explaining limitations of the data.

• Organising and storing data so it can be found and understood.

• Considering who can access data, for what purposes and under what conditions.

• Supporting appropriate access within TREs.

• Protecting confidential information through measures such as data de-identification.

• Planning how long data should be kept, how it will be securely archived or deleted and preserving information needed for future approved use.

Who carries out data stewardship?

Some people have 'data steward' in their job title. Others may carry out data stewardship activities without necessarily recognising them as such or using the term to describe their work.

Data stewardship is often shared across teams, with different people contributing their expertise through roles in data management, analysis, technology, governance or support services. Because of the critical role data stewards have within organisations, it is important that the skills involved are identified and defined, to help organisations recognise staff expertise, provide appropriate training and support career development.

Why does data stewardship matter?

The value of data depends on how well it is understood and cared for. Data stewardship is a critical part of the data curation lifecycle in use of data for research. Data stewards help prepare data for researcher access and maintain a dataset’s usefulness over time, while protecting the people whose data is used.

Good data stewardship results in well-managed data that is fit for purpose and enables research that can be trusted to better inform public services and organisational decisions. Find out more about why data stewardship matters from CaSDaR (Careers and Skills for Data-driven Research).

Find out how our FRAME-DS project is helping recognise data stewardship practice and support staff development.