The permanence of data

A number of recent events have lead me to consider a little bit more about the permanence of data. Is data a permanent or a temporary thing?

Right good data or The right good data?

Most businesses are trying to ensure that they have good data, or as they might say in Yorkshire “Reet good data” (hence the flat cap image).

Before expending lots of time (and money) polishing and honing your data to perfection, have you assessed whether you are improving the right data?

Data accident reporting

Those of you who are familiar with our blog will recall that we periodically compare how people treat data compared to real life situations. Two examples of this approach are “Would you allow this?” and “The Data Accident Investigation Board”.

Taking a similar approach this post will compare data accident reporting with Health and Safety Reporting.

Is data slowing down “the business”?

I just spotted an interesting article in Computer Weekly “High touch is just as important as high tech“.

The article paints an objective picture about how human interactions have been changed by technology.
From a data perspective there is an interesting quote:
“…managing the increase in data was slowing down business processes and the resulting cumbersome and inefficient internal systems were the main barrier to business success in 2011″
I’m not sure I agree, does this match what you are experiencing?

High touch is just as important as high tech

Do your Data Quality Heroes know who they are?

If you are a data steward (or similar) tasked with improving the quality of your organisations data, then you will be reliant on many people to help improve your data quality who will often be outside your direct team. Above all, you may have people who have more beneficial impact on data quality than their peers.

These are your Data Quality Heroes,but do they know they are heroes?