Data Steward Identification and Training Guide

Data Governance – Developing Evidence Data Steward Identification and Training Guide

Overview

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Learn more about data stewardship through using this resource. Then, use this guide to identify and train data stewards to support your district’s use case solution.

Data stewards will be central to implementing your district’s use case solution. Data stewards are staff members who have expertise on program-level data and the ownership over how that data is managed and shared. The data stewards who are responsible for data related to your district’s use case have likely been identified informally by your team throughout this process.

A data steward is the person(s) in your school or district responsible for the management and fitness of data elements — both content and metadata. He/she should have a deep understanding of the connection between the data and district needs. This person also ensures data is collected correctly for local and federal reporting.

In this activity, your team will officially identify the relevant data stewards for the data that is connected to your district’s use case solution. In addition, your team will develop an action plan for working with these data stewards to ensure the successful implementation of your district’s use case solution.

Understanding Data Stewardship

Your team should first review the “Single Agency Data Governance: Roles and Responsibilities” information below from the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) SLDS Grant Program to familiarize yourselves with the role of data stewards in data governance. In particular, your team should understand the following:

Data Stewards:

Support how data is defined, collected, and reported for a program area on the behalf of an organization;
Operationalize data policies and processes related to the data in their program area; and
Ensure data is accurate and correctly reported internally and externally.

Single-Agency Data Governance: Roles and Responsibilities in Practice

To be effective and sustainable, data governance roles and responsibilities must fit the context, culture, and capacity of the agency. The following examples illustrate how three states are implementing single-agency data governance roles and responsibilities.

California Department of Education

Although some had advocated for a data governance program for ten years, the California Department of Education got serious about data governance after the retail giant Target was attacked in 2013, compromising 110 million customers’ personal and financial data. The DOE used the Target data breach as a catalyst to establish data governance. Various managers of student data had begun regular meetings. They engaged executive leaders, developed a project charter, and became the Data Management Committee. The executive team is responsible for approving revisions to the charter, and the Data Management Committee meets quarterly with the executive team.

Once the structure of Educational Data Governance (EDGo) was implemented, the Data Management Committee, in addition to its other duties, was tasked with demonstrating the value of data governance to staff members in all relevant program areas and offices. The Data Management Committee also
– establishes working groups to complete data-related projects;
– assigns staff to collect, use, monitor, maintain, and secure data;
– establishes standard processes, policies, training, and associated communication plans for coordinated data collection, management, dissemination, and use;
– considers new data elements (including determining the appropriate level, data collection, how the data element influences practice, policy or research, etc.);
– advocates/advises on data management issues/initiatives;
– maintains and enforces a department wide data collection and reporting calendar;
– approves all new data-related projects, contracts, and efforts;
– identifies tracks, and resolves critical data issues such as data access requirements and authoritative data sources for accountability measures and reporting;
– escalates critical data issues that cannot be resolved at the DMC level to the DGLT;
– reviews and provides guidance on all data collections;
– meets monthly to collaborate and resolve issues, review working groups (current/potential), and formulate recommendations for priorities; and
– develops strategic plans for data systems.
During its first year, the committee held an event modeled after a science fair or small vendor show, setting up various stations where staff members could learn about data governance. Topics included geographic information systems (GIS), a data resource guide, a data privacy table, and information security, each manned by the team members responsible for those aspects of data governance.

Currently, the Data Management Committee meets monthly and hosts quarterly highlight sessions to ensure that staff members are aware of and are well-trained on data governance.

Michigan Department of Education

The Michigan Department of Education (MDE) is working on a data governance policy that will establish a data architect role and a data steward role. The data architect role and the data architect committee were established to design technology architecture to support MDE data asset needs as approved by the Data Governance Board. The collaborative focus of the committee spans the work across the data stewards/subject matter experts and the data governance board. The committee is responsible for maintaining technology product roadmaps (software and hardware) necessary to support current and future requirements. All members of the committee are expected to define data standards and data cleansing processes; make recommendations to the data governance board; generate solutions to meet business needs with pros, cons, and high level cost estimates; and respond to escalated data issues from data stewards/subject matter experts.

MDE is separate from the Michigan Center for Educational Performance and Information (CEPI), an agency responsible for collecting, storing, and reporting on education data in the state, and it is leveraging some lessons from CEPI as it develops a data governance structure of its own.

Single-Agency Data Governance: Roles and Responsibilities in Practice 2
Data Architect. A data architect builds complex computer data systems. An architect works with a team that looks at the data needs of the department and the data that are available, and creates a blueprint for providing MDE and its stakeholders with accurate, secure, and sustainable data systems. Data architects have information technology (IT) skills and may have highly technical knowledge of SQL databases.

Data Steward/Subject Matter Expert. A data steward is a person with bona fide expert knowledge about a set of data, data systems, or administrative rules related to a specific job or function. Data stewards might be policy experts, data analysts, researchers, compliance experts, or those involved with grant funding.

Minnesota Department of Education

Based on guidance from its policy review committee, the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) has included“ all staff ” as the base of its data governance structure. Specifically, all MDE staff are required to know that the data governance policy exists, understand the data governance structure, and know how it affects their work.

The data stewards are responsible for communicating with their divisions about data governance issues and must seek review before returning to a data stewards’ meeting with are commendation for solution of the issue. Staff members work with data stewards in their divisions to communicate data use, collection needs, and change requirements. Because these changes are fairly recent, some data stewards previously have not been charged with such work, and staff members were not accustomed to being responsible for data governance. Minnesota’s data governance policy includes language that clearly delineates data governance responsibilities and outlines consequences the organization might face for non-compliance. MDE’s data steward committee has met several times, and the structure is working well. Job descriptions will be updated to include responsibilities for data governance, and the process implemented through the data governance policy for communication between staff members and data stewards ensures that all agency staff members are engaged with data governance.

Additional Resources:

California Department of Educational Data Governance
https://www.cde.ca.gov/ds/ed/
Michigan Department of Education
https://www.michigan.gov/mde/
Minnesota Department of Education Data Center
https://education.mn.gov/mde/data/

Identifying Data Stewards

Reference columns 1 and 2 in your Use Case Catalog Template and consider the following questions from the “Single Agency Data Governance: Roles and Responsibilities” guide and Digital Promise to identify your district’s data stewards:

When leadership has a question about these data domains or data elements, which staff member is the point of contact?
When district staff have a question about the timing, definitions, or business rules for these data domains and data elements, which staff member is the point of contact?
Which staff member reviews these data domains and elements before they are released as part of public reporting, such as reporting to leadership or external stakeholders?
If there is no clear data steward for a data domain or data element, which staff member can be responsible for the data in the short-term?

Use Case Data Steward Action Planning

After identifying your district’s data stewards, your team should develop a plan around how to engage these staff members in the implementation of your district’s use case solution. Your team should develop these plans collaboratively with your district’s data stewards to ensure overall success and alignment.

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Complete the template titled Use Case Data Steward Action Plan 2.0 for every data steward that was identified.

Data Steward Action Planning Template

1	Data Steward:
2	Use Case Data Domains and Data Elements:
3	Responsibilities:
4	Authority:
5	Engagement:

In row 1, record the name and role of the data steward.
In row 2, reference the Use Case Data Catalog Template and identify all the data domains and data elements that the data steward is responsible for related to your district’s use case.

Collaborate with the data steward to complete the following sections.
In row 3, describe the responsibilities that this data steward will have related to the use case ata domains and data elements that were identified in the previous step.
In row 4, describe the types of decisions that the data steward is authorized to make related to the use case data domains and data elements. Note any important details around the district decision-making model that the data steward may need to navigate to be effective. Also note how often your team and the data steward will engage or meet (e.g., once a month) to align on the progress of their work related to the use case solution.

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