Custodianwhich
Custodianwhich is a term used in discussions of data governance to describe a decision-support framework for assigning custodianship of data assets. In this concept, a custodian is the entity responsible for managing access, protection, retention, and compliance for a given resource, while custodianwhich specifies who should take on that responsibility in a given context.
The name blends custodian with which to indicate the moment of choice in custody assignments. It is
Mechanically, custodianwhich can be implemented as a policy engine, workflow, or decision-support tool. It analyzes metadata,
Applications include enterprise data lakes, shared archives, cloud storage, and privacy-compliance programs where explicit custodianship is
Variants range from rule-based custodianwhich that follows fixed policies to AI-assisted versions that infer assignments from
Critics note the lack of standard definitions and the risk that ambiguous authority can undermine governance.