When reading a recent excellent blog post called “How to Assign a Data Owner” by Rayk Fenske I once again came to think about how I dislike the word owner in “Data Owner” and “Data Ownership”.

I am not alone. Recently Milan Kucera expressed the same feelings on DataQualityPro. I also remember that Paul Woodward from British Airways on MDM Summit Europe 2009 said: Data is owned by the entire company – not any individuals.

My thoughts are:

• Owner is a good word where we strive for fit for a single purpose of use in one silo
• Owner may be a word of choice where we strive for fit for single purposes of use in several silos
• Owner is a bad word where we strive for fit for multiple purposes of use in several silos

Well, I of course don’t expect all the issues raised by Rayk will disappear if we are able to find a better term than “Data Owner”.

Nevertheless I will welcome better suggestions for coining what is really meant with “Data Ownership”.