Mind the (data) gap!

Travellers on London Underground will be familiar with the term “Mind the Gap” which is both a visible, and an audio, warning to make sure that you do not become an unfortunate statistic on the railway – you may lose items between the train and platform (hang on to your Kindle when boarding!) or, worse still, trip/slip in the gap.

It is also important that you “Mind the (data) gap” when ‘things’ are transferred between organisations, departments and systems. I have used the term ‘thing’ to cover designs, products, services, responsibilities etc.

Good data is NOT a PDF document!

Well structured data that is properly stored, managed and governed is increasingly being recognised as a way to improve business efficiency and effectiveness. However, too many people still think that information stored in electronic format is good data…

Decisions without information

 

When I saw a review of the book “Die Kunst des klugen Handelns” (The Art of Acting Cleverly) which started with the words:

“Try to get through life with a minimum of information. You will make better decisions. What you do not need to know remains worthless even if you are aware of it.”

That got me thinking! When running training sessions I sometimes pose the question “Is it better to make a decision without data or one with data of unknown quality?” to try and get people thinking about decision making and the role that data plays in it.

Zero data defects???

I think all people who are involved in data in any way would like to be in a position where they were no data defects and data could be relied upon 100%. Is this achievable?

I regularly use a comparison between approaches to health and safety/ work practices and the approaches to data. A recent achievement on a major project I am involved with provides another example of how we should perhaps be approaching data.

The same data… but different answer

When discussing data quality issues, we frequently address issues where inconsistent data can lead to analysis problems.

The 2012 Olympics present an interesting variant where the input data is the same, but leads to a different answer…