Policy Custodian

The Policy Custodian role is assigned the responsibility of defining and maintaining machine-language (technical) and natural-language (human-readable) policies used by service contracts and policies assigned to services in general. Although this role can be assumed by the same person acting as a Schema Custodian, it is not uncommon for different individuals or groups to be responsible for defining and maintaining policies.

Policy Custodians are often required to ensure that operational service policies remain in alignment with parent business policies. This can further lead to unique versioning requirements as business policies can be subject to various changes that end up affecting service contracts.

Figure 1 – As with the Schema Custodian, the Policy Custodian is closely tied to the service contract. In this case, the Policy Custodian is involved when service policies related to the service contract are affected.