EPA Data Stewardship

While the DGAC and CIO-SAC ensure data management policies are consistent across EPA, implementation of agency data management policies, in alignment with agency mission and regulatory requirements, is accomplished through collaboration between program/regional office Data Officers, Data Sponsors and Data Stewards. The coordination between these roles is described as follows:

Data Officers represent each program/regional office and serve as a liaison between their organization’s management, Data Sponsors, Data Stewards, business subject matter experts, and the larger agency data governance community. They also work to communicate about the agency’s management initiatives, advance the culture to value its use for data-driven decisions, and socialize issues and solutions, building collaborative and trusting partnerships across the agency.
Data Sponsors are senior leaders who are ultimately accountable for a data asset’s existence within the agency and for ensuring data governance processes and guidelines are followed within their organization.
Data Stewards have management responsibilities for the data lifecycle of specific data asset(s) (e.g., creation or collection, processing, documentation and dissemination, manage use, storage, and disposition, to include destruction and deletion). They also manage the quality, security, and accessibility of EPA’s data and ensure that data is fit for purpose and in compliance with policies and regulations.

Data stewardship happens throughout a data asset’s lifecycle as the following activities are performed:

Visualization of the Planning for the data lifecycle collection thru output. Details contained in the adjoining bulleted list.

Getting the data – Collecting, entering, capturing and/or acquiring data.
Making data usable – Processing, organizing, cleaning up and/or combining data.
Managing data for audience & access – Defining the data, its relationship to other data and/or making data available to a variety of users. Analyzing data and using it in reports, dashboards and maps.
Maintaining data & improve the data process – Protecting and/or ensuring the best technologies, documentation, and processes are used to get, process, manage, and/or use data.
Retiring data when no longer needed – Reviewing and/or processing data for archival or deletion.

Data Officers and Data Stewards also often act as a liaison between the IT department and the business side of the organization. In fact, data stewards need a range of technical and business-oriented skills, including programming, data modeling, data analysis, and data management. They should also be strong communicators and collaborators to help with cross program integration.