Our mission is to provide your business with a tailor-made solution to your everyday data needs by building, implementing and managing your data assets, thereby enabling decision makers to make sound, consistent and information-based decisions on the fly.
Database Administrator
It is our mission to ensure that your data is securely stored and made available based on information criticality and sensitivity. We perform consistent backups of your databases whilst maintaining full data integrity; put in place a disaster recovery plan to ensure that your system's data can be restored quickly in the event of a natural disaster or any other catastrophe. We manage all databases and related systems using the most current software and best practices in a secure, conservative manner to deliver these services.
Data Steward
It's out mission to manage the data assets of a firm in order to improve their reusability, accessibility and quality. It is our responsibility to approve business naming standards, develop consistent data definitions, determine data aliases, business rules specifications, develop standard calculations, data quality analysis, data retention and security. One of our main attributes is that we must have a thorough understanding of the business works and therefore act as the main medium between IT and end users to gain that understanding.
Question 2
Contrasting DA, DBA and Data Steward Activities
Data Administrator
Database Administrator
Data Steward
Gather business requirements
Defines the required parameters for database definitions and fast query responses
Establishing and maintaining a company's data management policy
Analyze requirements
Analyzes the volume of data and space requirements
Discover and mitigate risks introduced by inadequate data quality
Translate the business rules (requirements) into data models
Database tuning and parameter enhancements
Responsible for improving the quality of data
Maintaining conceptual, logical and physical data models
Backups and recovery of databases
Manage appropriate permissions
Defines and enforces standards and conventions such as definitions, naming conventions, and abbreviations - Data dictionary
Ensures data integrity is maintained within the database
Responsible for ensuring data consistency and integrity throughout the database
Manage metadata repository
Responsible for the transformation of the logical model designed by the data administrator into a working physical structure
Accountable for the data
Assists the database administrator in creating physical tables from the model
Implementing data security requirements
Classifies data based on sensitivity, value and criticality
Assists in data integration resolution
Ensure that reasonable and appropriate security controls are implemented to protect the confidentiality, integrity and availability of data
Maintaining meta data repository
Must understand and approve how data is stored, processed and transmitted
Maintaining business rules
Question 3
Overlapping of Roles
There is often a misconception as to the actual roles and responsibilities of a data steward, data administrator and database administrator. Typically, in a smaller companies, the role of the data administrator and database administer can be combined into a single role. However, each function should have its own roles, clearly defined to avoid any confusion. There is little overlap in terms of each group's responsibilities; however, collaboration and communication must take place to ensure the data assets of the corporation are used to their maximum return on investment [1] .
Listed below are the specific roles for each function - data stewardship, data administration and database administration. [2]
Data Steward
Data Administrators
Database Administrators
Resolving Data Integration Issues
Translating the Business Rules into Data Models
Generating Physical DB Schema
Determining Data Security
Maintaining Conceptual, Logical and Physical Data Models
Performing Database Tuning
Documenting Data Definitions, Calculations, Summarizations, etc.
Assisting in Data Integration Resolution
Creating Database Backups
Maintaining/Updating Business Rules
Maintaining Meta data Repository
Planning for Database Capacity
Analyzing and Improving Data Quality
Implementing Data Security Requirements
Question 4
Organization Structure
Question 5
Report: Data Administration Recommendations
Data is a resource of a company whose value increases through its widespread and appropriate use. Its value is diminished through misuse, misinterpretation, alteration, or unnecessary restrictions to its access [3] .
The following recommendations are critical to all aspects of the business, regardless of whether the data is used or maintained by management, marketing, finance, IT, or any other departments.
Data Management Roles
The Company is the data owner of all the company's data; individual departments may have stewardship responsibilities for portions of the data. Each department will be assigned to an appropriate organizational unit with specified security rights and permissions.
Data Collection and Maintenance
The director for operations and IT will ultimately be responsible for complete, valid, reliable, and timely data collection. Operational responsibility for data collection and maintenance is typically assigned to the data managers but in our case it could be the general manager.
Data Storage
An official data storage location for each data element should be identified. Physically data will be organized based on organizational unit structure.
Data Validation and Correction
Where practicable, mechanisms should be put in place to ensure that data has not been altered or destroyed in an unauthorized manner. For example, MS Word documents could have passwords for read-only access only or even prevent unauthorized users from opening the file altogether.
Data Manipulation, Modification, and Reporting
Policies regarding the manipulation, modification, or reporting of any data should be set in place. Individual data users will be held accountable for their specific uses of the data. Within Pastel, there are different levels of security which is based on financial environment i.e. debtors, creditors, cashiers etc. Therefore individual within the company should be setup according to their specific job functions within the financial department.
Data Security and Disaster Recovery
All data users having access to restricted portions of the data should formally acknowledge either by a signed statement being a hard copy or electronic copy, their understanding of the level of access provided and their responsibility to maintain the confidentiality of the data they access. Management should ensure that a off-site backup storage process is implemented and maintained.
User Support
User support should be available primarily through documentation of the information resource but also, as needed, in the form of training and consulting services. This responsibility may be delegated to the managers or coordinators but is important for end users to understand the way the company values it data. It is important to have a centralized call-logging system to identify future training needs.
One of the biggest threats to any company are internal threats i.e. employee working for the company , therefore it is important for everyone within the company to be aligned to handle data in the manner as outlined in the company's policies and procedures.
