Why record ownership and status?

Name a role, not necessarily a person

Record the role that answers questions about the field, such as the inventory documentation lead, rather than the individual who happens to hold it today. Roles outlast people, and a dictionary whose ownership disappears when somebody changes job was never really owned. The owner is a label the studio stores; there is no identity, account or authorisation behind it.

Use status consistently

The four states are draft, needs-review, reviewed and retired, and they help only if everyone reads them the same way. Decide what reviewed means in your team, which usually means somebody other than the author checked the definition against how the data is actually produced. Retired keeps a field visible with its history instead of deleting a record some past reader relied on.

Review dates age visibly

A field marked reviewed without a date is flagged by the review, because a status with no date cannot age. A date two collection cycles old tells a reader something even when nothing about the field has changed, which a completion percentage never does. Set the review cadence in the dataset context so the ageing is measured against something real.

Worked example from the sample project

Four of the sample's six fields are marked reviewed and two are marked needs-review, and the steward is recorded at dataset level as the inventory documentation lead rather than as a named individual. That combination is deliberate. A role outlasts a person, and a dictionary whose ownership evaporates when somebody changes job was never really owned.

The status values do work that a completeness percentage cannot. Draft, needs-review, reviewed and retired tell a reader which parts of the document to trust and which to ask about, and a review date ages visibly in a way that a green tick does not. A field last reviewed two field seasons ago is telling you something even when nothing about it has changed.

What this does not do

• A reviewed status records that somebody said so, not that an organisation approved it.
• The studio does not notify, assign, escalate or track anybody's work.
• An owner field is a label; there is no identity or authorisation behind it.

Do this in the studio

Name a role rather than a person, and let review dates age in the open.

1. Open the Field folios station and set an owner role on each field.
2. Use draft, needs-review, reviewed and retired consistently across the project.
3. Record the review date whenever a field is actually reviewed.

Open the studio at the Field folios station

Related reading

• Editions and maintenance
• Testing reader comprehension
• What belongs in a field folio