Governance Operating Model

Governance Operating Model

Council + owners + stewards + custodians — who decides, who owns, who curates, who runs?

Why it matters

A working governance model is four roles, ratified by a cross-functional council, with a lightweight exception process. Anything heavier dies in adoption.

Going deeper

The four roles map cleanly to RACI for any governance decision:

Decision	Council	Owner	Steward	Custodian
Policy ratification	A	C	C	I
Domain scope / definitions	I	A	R	I
Daily DQ + issue triage	I	C	A	C
Storage / access enforcement	I	C	C	A

If two cells in the same row both hold A, you've duplicated accountability and created a future blame fight. If a row has no A, that decision will fall through the floor.

Think of a governance model as the operating crew of a museum.

• The board of trustees sets policy on what the museum collects and how it treats visitors. That's your data council.
• Each gallery has a curator — the named expert responsible for what hangs on the walls and whether the labels are right. That's your data owner per domain.
• Conservators quietly fix the cracks, clean the paint, swap out the lighting. Day-to-day quality. That's your data steward.
• Building services run the HVAC, the security alarms, the loading dock. They don't decide what's on the walls; they keep the building open. That's your data custodian (the platform / DBA team).

Confuse curator with conservator and the gallery looks great but the paint flakes. Confuse either with building services and the doors lock at 6 p.m. with no warning.