Model owner: why the "data owner" became the owner of the model

Until now, the app called the person who creates a study and issues the ECBYTS Seal the data owner. The name is now model owner.

The change is not cosmetic. It corrects an idea the old name suggested and that is not true.

Why the name changed

In an environmental study, numbers come from many hands. A field team collects the sample, the laboratory issues the report, a sensor sends continuous readings and historical data comes from an old report. Nobody "owns" all of those numbers at once.

What one person actually does is design the world model in which those numbers make sense: which area, which wells, sources and elements exist, which campaigns are included, which parameters are measured and which rule they are compared against. That is the model owner's role.

Calling that role "data owner" implied that one person answers alone for every measurement. That hides exactly who needs to be visible: who approved each data package and who checked it.

The flow of roles

Each role answers for a different part of the path from raw data to decision:

1. Model owner — designs the world model of that data: the boundary, the elements, the campaigns and the assessment rules. This is the person who organizes the study and issues the seal.
2. Technical responsible party — approves each new data package of that model. When the numbers change, the previous acceptance no longer applies and a new approval is required.
3. Legal responsible party — answers for the organization that uses the result.
4. Auditor — checks independently. By rule, the auditor can never be the same person as the model owner, the technical responsible party or the legal responsible party within the same scope.
5. Authority — the agency that receives the result and oversees it. In the Seal, the agency profile already sees the documents that the responsible parties released.

People's names only appear after each one accepts the role. Until then, the seal shows the role with the identity restricted.

The model owner answers for the design. The technical responsible party answers for each data package. The auditor answers for the check. Each one signs only what is theirs.

What changes for current users

• Nothing disappears. Studies, `.ecbt` keys and issued seals remain valid as they are. The change is to the wording on screen, in News and in the documentation.
• Same places, new name. The Seal card, the pricing catalog, the Seal tour and the public model marketplace now say "model owner".
• Technical identifiers stay. Older files and records still carry the term data owner in internal fields. They do not change now, so that keys already shared keep working.

Next step

In practice, roles are not always fixed. One technical responsible party may approve the 2025 campaign and another the 2026 one. An auditor may look only at a group of parameters. The team is designing how the same set of roles can vary across the study, over time and by parameter, without exposing anyone who has not accepted yet and without weakening the protection of shared `.ecbt` keys. When that reaches the app, it will be published as a new article here.