Access to Data
Stewardship Responsibilities
Although institutions are responsible to sponsors, good management practice and practical considerations necessitate that the stewardship of various kinds of data be distributed. Institutions should be clear in defining stewardship accountability and responsibility. Unless the distribution of responsibility is clear, misunderstandings can result and compliance jeopardized.
The stewardship of research data properly falls within the purview of the principal investigator and other researchers. Depending on the nature of the project, certain responsibilities can be delegated from the principal investigator to other members of the research project (e.g. other faculty, post-docs, and graduate students). At the same time, no matter how such responsibilities are delegated, the flow of accountability runs from the principal investigator being responsible to the institution for the stewardship of research data, just as the institution is ultimately responsible to the sponsor.
The stewardship of financial and administrative data is allocated according to the function, expertise, and responsibilities of various administrative offices. Institutions will allocate stewardship responsibilities according to their organizational structure. For instance, it is likely that decentralized organizations will allocate responsibilities to departments, while centralized organization maintain the data a less dispersed fashion. Some institutions, for example, will maintain cost-sharing data centrally, while other will allocate responsibility to departments. In such case, the departments periodically provide cost-sharing data to the central administration to enable the latter to complete financial reports to sponsors. The auditable records, however, may very well be maintained at the department level.
Stewardship Responsibilities continues –>
