Methods and systems are provided for decentralizing user data access rights control activities in networked organizations having diverse access control models and file server protocols. A folder management application enables end users of the file system to make requests for access to storage elements, either individually, or by becoming members of a user group having group access privileges. Responsibility for dealing with such requests is distributed to respective group owners and data owners, who may delegate responsibility to authorizers. The application may also consider automatically generated proposals for changes to access privileges. An automatic system continually monitors and analyzes access behavior by users who have been pre-classified into groups having common data access privileges. As the organizational structure changes, these groups are adaptively changed both in composition and in data access rights.