Data Stewards: Conquering Data Debt in the Age of AI

In the age of AI, data stewardship has moved from a supporting role to center stage. Data stewards, with their deep understanding of the business use and production of data, are uniquely positioned to guide organizations for transformative impact to lever AI and data.  Stewards possess the best access into the business and are more qualified that most to determine how the combination of the right data and judicious application of AI can help organizations. What most data stewards are not provided in advance is a roadmap to eliminating data debt as a necessary prerequisite to smoothly functioning data operations. Well thought out plans crash and burn on the rocks of reality–the legacy data environment! This program will illustrate AI’s expert-steward companion capabilities focused on specific organizational challenges.  Often these are complicated by some or all of the following:

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–  The specific role of data ‘ownership’
–  Full time versus part time support/resourcing
–  Generally low data literacy everywhere
–  The confounding complexity of data debit
–  The impact of data that is not fit for purpose on AI

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Data stewards are the implementation arm of data governance. They are also the first line of defense against data debt resulting from bad data practices. Whether it’s data profiling or in-depth root cause analysis, data stewards ensure the organizationally shared data is reliably interconnected and of sufficient quality to use as AI inputs and function as the first touchpoint for ethical discussions . Whether starting or restarting your data stewardship program, success comes from

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–  Specifically being able to integrate AI support to
    compliment architectural (re)developmental opportunities
–  Understanding the cadence/role of foundational
    data practices supporting organizational operations
–  Proving value with tangible ROI
–  Improving AI effectiveness/efficiencies
    using organization-wide perspectives
–  Comprehending how stewards need to be
    multifunctional and dexterous, especially at first
–  Integrating the role of data debt fighting