I recently had to spend some time engaging with an Irish Government agency as a result of my voluntary redundancy from my former employer. Now, while I’ll admit I am perhaps over sensitive to information quality issues, having had a lot of experience with them and having written about them a lot over the years, I do find that I am also a magnet for these things.

So I was not surprised to learn that, according to the Irish government’s computer, my wife was married to me but I was not married to my wife. The Computer Says No.

While this took only a second for the very nice and personable civil servant to correct, it does beg these questions:

1. How was one part of the relationship between my wife and I populated but the other wasn’t? (What process failed)?
2. How was that incomplete relationship not identified (What checks are performed on the quality/completeness/consistency of information in the Irish Civil Service)?
3. What down stream systems might have been making incorrect decisions based on that broken relationship (what processes might fail)?
4. How far might that error have propagated?

For example, if my wife died (heaven forbid) would I have had difficulty in claiming a widower’s pension because while the computer says she is my wife, it doesn’t say that I’m her husband?

I was surprised to hear the civil servant complain then about the quality of the information and how it made life difficult. I was doubly surprised when he told me he’d been trying to explain to his boss about how if you set up a database correctly it can help prevent errors.

Unfortunately, he works in the real world, in the Civil Service. Having had experience with civil service type cultures in the past, my fear is that the enthusiasm that that young civil servant showed for finding and fixing errors and trying to understand the root causes of the problems and how to prevent them will be ground down by management attitudes of “that’s above your pay grade”.

And so we return to the theme of leadership versus management in the context of information quality. To achieve quality you need to foster a culture where even the lowest member of staff can make suggestions for improvement and can be empowered to lead on their implementation or to find out more about how the problem can be solved.  Waiting for inspiration to strike from on high and trickle down often leaves the crud problems backing up in the process pipelines as the 2 minutes to fix becomes 10 minutes, or (even worse) becomes “oh, I’m not paid to do that”.

Environments which rigidly enforce and demand respect for the “chain of command” often only find their bottom up leaders during a significant crisis. Think “battlefield promotion” in the context of military matters and you have the closest parallel I can think of (at the moment). Until then, they promote on seniority rather than merit (“Hey Bob, you’re still not dead, so here’s a promotion”) and newer staff members who have ideas that are going in the direction of a solution often get tagged as the “squeaky wheel”.

However, even in those type of environments, it is possible for the squeaky wheel to have some influence on the thinking of management. It just takes time and perseverance and not a small amount of pure unadulterated pig headed self belief to keep on pushing the question. Eventually the squeaky wheel gets a little oil and, with every win, the squeaky wheel helps the business move smoother and has to squeak less.

To the young civil servant who corrected that small error on a government file….. Well done. Thank you for your focus on the customer, your sense of humour about the issue, your insight into some of the fundamental issues in Information Quality. I doubt you will read this, but if you do, join the IAIDQ where you can learn from other squeak wheels how to get the oil you need. By being part of a community populated by people who’ve been there and done that, you’ll get the support you need to be pig headed about the need to tackle processes, system design and simple governance to ensure the quality of information in key functions of your organisation.

Quality is not job one. Meeting or exceeding the expectations of your customers is job one.  Or to put it another way…

Quality is not Job One (from http://gapingvoid.com)

The Bord Gais story

First off, I am a Bord Gais (Irish Gas Board, now an electricity supplier) customer. I switched to them earlier this year to save money. I provided personal details about myself and my wife along with details of the bank  account our bills get paid out of. So, my wife and I are almost certainly included in the 75000 people who have recently heard about how four laptops were stolen from the Bord Gais HQ two weeks ago, one of which had our personal data on it in an unencrypted form.

Oh… we are assured it was password protected. Forgive me if I don’t feel the love about that assurance. Passwords were made to be broken, and in my experience they are often not very strong. (”P@ssword”).

Everything reported in the media thus far suggests to me that this incident stems from yet another chronic failure to recognise the value of the “Information Asset” and treat it with the care and respect that it deserves.

What do we know?

• The laptops were stolen in a burglary.

Unless the burglars had ample time to wander around the headquarters of a blue chip company rifling presses looking for laptops, it would seem to me that the laptops were left on desks unsecured.  A basic practice for the physical security of laptops is to either lock them  away or take them home with you and secure them there. Leaving them sitting on your desk invites larceny.

• This laptop ‘fell through the cracks’ for installing encryption software

OK. Mistakes can happen. However a simple check for the existence of encryption software is an obvious preventative control that could have prevented the unencrypted laptop from being put out into use.  Of course, just because there is encryption software on a laptop doesn’t mean that the user will actually encrypt their files in all cases.

Reliance on policy and technology without ensuring control, culture and people changes are implemented as well (such as changing work practices or giving the lowest techie the right to tell the CEO to bugger off if he wants his laptop before it is encrypted) invites a false and unwarranted sense of security.

Also, I am aware of one large company which has rolled out encryption on laptops, but only to senior management and primarily to protect documents relating to management strategy. The fact that the proletariat knowledge worker with a laptop can have spreadsheets a-plenty chock full  of personal data doesn’t seem to have registered. They are protecting the wrong asset.

• The file was password protected

OK. Two points here… is it the file or the operating system? How secure is the password? If the password is on the file might the password be stored in a text file on the laptop, or in an email, or on a post-it note stuck to the lid?

Even if the spreadsheet (and inevitably it will be a spreadsheet) is password protected, there are a number of free utilitites for recovering passwords on Microsoft office documents. It took me all of 15 seconds to find some on Google.

MS Access is a little trickier, but where there is a will (and a basic knowledge of Access) there is a way.

When it comes to securing personal data, passwords should be seen as the last (and weakest) line of defence.  Passwords, like promises, are all to easy to break.

• The break in happened 2 weeks ago

So, what we know from the media is that the thieves (or the people who eventually wound up with the laptops) have had 2 weeks to do the google searches I’ve done to find the tools necessaray to crack a password on a file.

they’ve had two weeks to go to market with their asset to see what price they can get. They’ve had two weeks to start applying for loans or credit cards.

What I know from the media now is that Bord Gais is more concerned with the Regulator and the Data Protection Commissioner than they are with their customers.

What I don’t yet know from the media

• What the fricking hell was my data doing on a laptop?

OK,  so I’ll accept that there can be reasons for data to be taken onto laptops or local PCs from time to time (migrations, data profiling, reporting, remediation of compliance issues etc.).

But ALL the records and ALL the fields in those records? That’s just ridiculous.

And was that purpose consistent with the purposes for which I provided the data in the first place?

Having ALL the eggs in one unsecured basket invites loss and security breaches.

• Was the laptop securely stored or locked in any physical way?

I have to assume no on this one, but who knows… the theives may just have been very lucky that the first four presses they broke open happened to have laptops in them.

No amount of software security or business practice will prevent a theft if the actual physical security of the asset is not assured. The asset in this case isn’t the laptop (value no more than €600),  but the data is worht a whole lot more.

75,0000 records at around €2.00 a record is an easy€150,000.

• Will Bord Gais compensate customers who suffer loss or damage through their negligence?

OOOh. Negligence is a strong word. But leaving unencrypted, unsecured data (yes it is password protected but that’s not much comfort) lying around is negligent. If I suffer loss or injury (such as being liable for a debt I didn’t incur or having my credit rating trashed, or having my identity stolen) will Bord Gais compensate me (without me having to sue them first)? read more…

So. The Irish Government (in the form of the Dept. of Education and the State Exams Commission [SEC]) are faced with a €1million bill because an exam Superintendent inadvertently distributed the wrong exam paper earlier this week.

An avoidable root cause for this now unavoidable expenditure seems to be that the packaging that exam papers comes in is too similar. The SEC issued a reminder to Superintendents about this very issue. 

Reminders and warnings are ultimately reactive in nature. They scream “we know there is a risk of a screw up here, so be careful now”. They do not, unfortunately, in themselves reduce the risk of the screw up happening - that requires the person receiving the warning to remember in all cases to act on it.

Warnings just give the people who issue the warnings the scope to say “we told you to be careful” as they fire the person who made the error. They are, in effect, a verbal (or written) form of inspecting a defect out of a process before it reaches the customer. They do not improve the process.

So, what might process improvement here be that actually contributes to a reduction in the risk of significant financial loss to the State because one person in one exam centre makes one mistake?

When assessing whether it is worth changing a process, we need to assess the cost, impacts and risks involved. The risk of the wrong exam papers being given out is not that high. However, the cost and impact when it does happen is proving to be significant.

If we assume that the risk of it happening is no more than five times in 100 years then that is a 5% risk each year that something will go wrong (remember - we are dealing with probablity, not a schedule).  We can assume that in any year it happens, as soon as it does everyone involved will be acting on every warning given to make sure it only happens once - the survial instinct kicks in.

 If we assume that the basic financial cost each time will be in the region of €1 million, that means that, prudently, we should see what sort of change can be implemented for an ‘insurance premium’ of €50,ooo  per year. This does not, of course, factor in the reputational damage to government agencies, the PR damage for the elected Minister, the stress impacts on students and their families as exams are rescheduled etc and any potential legal liabilities that might arise. For the sake of argument, we will assume that the monetary equivalent of those risks is  €20,000.

So. What change can we implement for up to  €70,000 per year that would prevent unintentional and indavertent confusion of exam papers because of similarities in their packaging?

One option would be to colour code the packaging with distinct colours (i.e. avoiding orange and brown and sticking with strong bold colours that definitely look different). Use different coloured packaging for each subject for example, or put a coloured line or cross on the packaging. Print a logo on the front of the packaging that illustrates the subject (a book for English, a globe for Geography, Einstein’s head for Physics, a picture of Peig for Irish). Anything to provide a standardised visual clue as to what the subject is.

My preference is for totally colour coded envelopes… If it is Red it is English, Green Irish, Blue French etc. 

Of course, to do it for ALL the subjects offered in the Leaving Cert in ALL centres might prove more costly than the notional €70,000 we’ve set aside as our insurance premium.

This is where we would need to further refine our view of the impact of the risk per subject. For example, investing in coloured wrapping for English is a no-brainer. It is a core subject that everyone does.  Accidentally leaking that paper affects ALL students in EVERY exam centre. That’s what costs the €1million we are trying to avoid paying out 5 out of every 100 years.

Colour coding Classical Studies however might be harder to cost justify. It’s not taken by that many students, it’s not examined in that many exam centres. The cost of colour coding the exam script envelopes for subjects like this could possibly be more than the cost of rescheduling the exam. Also, many of these less taken subjects are examined towards the end of the exams window… further reducing the risk of confusion as the box of exam scripts will be emptying fast.

So. How much would it cost the State Examinations Commission to colour code the top 10 subjects by number of students and number of exam centres? Would we even need 10 subjects coded in this way?

While there is little that can be done to ‘risk proof’ against an intentional leaking of an exam paper other than to have a second (or third) version of the exam on stand-by and having criminal sanctions for people caught doing so, there are simple changes that could be made to risk-proof against accidental leaking.

The only question is does the cost of introducing a preventative control that improves the quality of information presentation (by adding an additional cue - in this case colour) out weigh the risk and impact of having packages that are so similar that they can be accidentally confused. 

What sort of insurance premium against that risk is the SEC willing to pay?

Right - I’m opening with an apology. This should have gone out hours ago but it’s a Bank Holiday in Ireland, the sun is (uncharacteristically) shining so I took off to the beach with my wife and lost track of time… but better late than never.

As some of you may know, I’m a member of the IAIDQ, an international not-for-profit dedicated to developing the profession of Information Quality Management (a profession that spans both business and IT, and a host of professional disciplines from Compliance to Risk Management, to Legal, to Marketing, to Sales/CRM… Basically, if you need good quality information to succeed in a role, you need good quality information quality management).

This year the IAIDQ is 5 years old and is having a series of rolling celebrations, the Blog Carnival “Festival del IDQ Bloggers” being one of the strands of those celebrations. I’m honoured to be counted among the cadre of IDQ Bloggers (people who blog about Information Quality issues) and take immense pride in presenting to you, dear reader, the Roll of Honour for IDQ Bloggers from May 2009.

Entry #1 Steve Sarsfield

 Steve Sarsfield of the Data Governance and Data Quality Insider with this great post about Data Quality/Data Governance as a Movie. In it, he compares the “heroes” of the Data Governance/Data Quality profession as they battle (á la Neo or John McClane) to eliminate the “bad guys” of poor quality information and sloppy or ineffective data governance. 

Personally, I’d have added Kelly’s Heroes to the mix here, but then those of you who know me would say that I’d try and add Kelly’s Heroes to anything.

Steve Sarsfield is a data quality evangelist and author of the book the Data Governance Imperative.  His blog covers the world of data integration, data governance, and data quality from the perspective of an industry insider.

Entry #2: Bob Lambert

In this thought provoking post, Bob Lambert  shares his insights into why Project Sponsors aren’t blind, they just need glasses. In it, he highlights an all to common problem in poorly aligned IT projects and ‘re-engineering’ efforts where the project hits a “speed bump” of poor quality information and missed data integration requirements which leads to an inevitable project failure. Bob argues that the Project team should be given the mandate to have a checkpoint for the Project Sponsors to reality test the project costs and business case before blindly tilting at windmills trying to make the project work.

This one should be mandatory reading for anyone working in an IT/Business interface role who is staring down the barrel of a “rationalisation” programme or a “next generation business/systems architecture” programme. 

Bob Lambert is an IT professional interested in information management, business analysis, databases, & projects, and how IT and business get together to plan, build, and maintain business value. His blog at RobertLambert.net is about “aligned IT:” Aligned IT means IT integrated with business to create business value, and as such implies on time, on budget projects that meet their goals and motivated professionals working together to solve problems.

Entry #3 Jim Harris

Jim “the Gentleman” Harris returns this month with yet another amusing and thought provoking post on how the path to poor quality data is often paved with good intentions. In his post “The Nine Circles of Data Quality Hell“, Jim collates a number of factors (explored in earlier posts on his blog) which can lead to the Hell of Poor Quality data.

While a few commeters on Jim’s blog have suggested a few more, I think Jim has done a very admirable job documenting the common pitfalls that leave poor data quality managers every where facing yet another day pushing boulders up hills.

Jim Harris is an independent consultant, speaker, writer and blogger with over 15 years of professional services and application development experience in data quality. His blog, OCDQBlog.com is an independent blog offering a vendor-neutral perspective on data quality.

Entry #4 William Sharp

Entry number four comes from “new kid” on the Information Quality blogging block, William Sharp. In his post “Begin at the End - Ensuring Data Quality Success” elegantly sums up one of the challenges in developing, presenting, and implementing information quality improvement - the Value Proposition. William very nicely spells out the need to link you data quality project to clear business objectives in order to sell the value as, unlike ‘traditional’ IT projects, the impact of an information quality project is not as immediately apparent.

A great post from a promising new arrival to the Community.

William’s blog is the “DQ Chronicle“,  attempt to capture the  opportunities and challenges that exist as part of the various data quality initiatives encountered in the enterprise environment. He tries to keep the topics in a format easy to digest and direct as possible, side stepping profound pronouncements on Information Quality theory in favour of more direct content aimed new comers to the profession and people wanting to learn more.

William is a skilled business professional with 12 years experience in client partnering. He is based in US.

Entry #5 Tuppenceworth.ie

Tuppenceworth.ie is one of the leading blogs in the Irish Blogging community. Earlier this month they ran a post about poor quality information in one of the leading Irish banks and its impact on customers - a touching “real world” story of a real customer impact (I blogged about it myself and it was picked up by IQTrainwrecks.com).

Read the post here

Founded in 2001, initially as a static HTML site before morphing into its current blog format in recent years, Tuppenceworth.ie has become a noted fixture in the Irish Blogging community. Members of its writing team have featured on Irish media discusing blogs and blogging and bloggers (amongst other things). With themes ranging from media, arts, culture, politics and legal issues, Tuppenceworth is an eclectic read.

Tuppenceworth.ie is the brainchild of Simon McGarr and Fergal Crehan, with frequent guest contributions.

Entry #6 IQTrainwrecks.com 

IQTrainwrecks.com posted a story in May about a banking error by a bank in New Zealand which left a young couple with a massive overdraft facility, which they proceeded to drain before absconding. What IQTrainwrecks pointed out which was missed in mainstream media was that this was not the first time that this particular bank has made an error of this kind.

Read: Antipodean Bankers Sheepish over Overdraft Bungle (again)

Since 2006, IQTrainwrecks.com, which is a community blog provided and administered by the International Association for Information and Data Quality (IAIDQ), has been serving up regular doses of information quality disasters from around the world.

Entry #7 The DoBlog.

Despite having a busy month in work, I found time to put one post up that was inspired by the Tuppenceworth post.

In “Software Quality, Information Quality, and Customer Service”  I let a picture from a recent Dilbert strip do the talking for me (eventually). 

Perhaps if the Pointy Haired Boss had someone explaining the value of Information to his objectives (á la William’s post),  and if the project team had the mandate to cry “Halt” when things stopped making sense (as Bob suggests), then the team and customers wouldn’t find themselves descending the 9 Circles of Data Quality Hell, and the organisation wouldn’t need to cast around for a hero (see Steve’s post) to fix the inevitable IQTrainwreck.

Wrap up

Thanks to everyone who submitted a post for the June published, May reflecting edition of the IDQ Blog Carnival. Steve Sarsfield is the host for the next edition, hitting the Internet on or just before the 1st of July, covering Information/Data Quality blog posts published in the month of June (no cheating people - if you have a really good one from January.. update it and submit it). 

Literally within seconds of writing the first draft of this, I spotted a few more new Information Quality bloggers joining the fray. Welcome to them and I hope they submit a post or three.

If you want to submit a post for that edition, please visit the IAIDQ’s Blog Carnival page for details on how to submit your post.

Keep blogging!

Cripes. It’s been a month since I last posted here. Time flies when you are helping your boss figure out how to divide your work up before you leave the company in 3 weeks. I’ve also been very busy with my work in the International Association for Information and Data Quality - lots of interesting things happening there, including the Blog Carnival for Data Quality which I’ll be hosting come Monday!

One of the things I do in the IAIDQ is moderate and manage the IQTrainwrecks.com website. It is a resource site for people which captures real world stories of how poor quality information impacts on people, companies, and even economies.

Earlier this week I posted a case that was flagged to me by the nice people over at Tuppenceworth.ie concerning double-charging on customer accounts arising from a software bug. Details of that story can be found on IQTrainwrecks and on Tuppenceworth. I’d advise you to read either of those posts as they provide the context necessary for what follows here. read more…

I had a great response to my post recently about leadership in information quality. Since then I’ve had the opportunity to discuss leadership and aspects of leadership with a number of people, both in person and on d’interwebs. One key trend keeps cropping up… the approach and characteristics of a particular leader may not always be appropriate to the battle at hand and a real leader knows when it is time to pass the torch to someone else.

It was summed up for me very well by an Irish trade union leader who I spoke with last week. In his words:

Any leader who is planning for success should really start planning for succession if they want things to be sustained 

This is the difficult challenge of leadership. Knowing when the time is right for you to pass the baton and, equally as importantly, knowing that the people you are passing the baton too will be able to build on your leadership without appearing simply to be mere managers working solely within parameters you have defined, but instead being leaders in their own right, building on the foundations you have set to create a new vision.

Knowing the time to move on is difficult. It requires the leader to be able to focus both on the problems of today and the challenges of tomorrow and to have sufficient self-awareness to let them judge how well their skills, experience, passion and energy will meet the expectations of tomorrow’s battles.

And this needs to be planned with foresight to ensure you have time to develop your people and drive leaders from the bottom up in your organisation and in your team. Often this requires developing people’s confidence in themselves as much as the confidence others have in them. Inevitably it means letting them pedal the bicycle themselves to prove they can do it.

The plan needs to cover getting the right people on your team, developing them, growing their skills and ‘battle-hardening’ them. It means having a plan to instil the same core beliefs, priorities and passion (in my case for Information Quality) into your future leaders. At the same time you must ensure that they have the ability and capability to think for themselves and build on your example effectively while ensuring continuity and consistency. Above all, to take on the mantle of leadership, and to be effective, your successor needs to have enough credentials and credibility to face down challenges while having sufficient differentiators to avoid being viewed as a puppet of the outgoing leader.

And your last act as leader is to sell your successor to your stakeholders.

While this is true of pretty much any organisation, in my experience it is especially true of an information quality team. Getting your IQ programme started is a challenge that requires certain types of leadership characteristics. Keeping it going and sustaining the gains you make can often require a different leadership style and approach. Knowing when to make the change is a skill in itself, and given the risk of ‘pigeon holing’ that any specialist faces in an organisation, it can often require a move out of the organisation you are in (to elsewhere in the larger business or on to pastures new).

One noted Irish leader I have studied retired recently from a leadership role he had held for almost four decades. He had spent most of the last decade developing the people who are to replace him. They have a track record and credentials in the solutions of the past, have a passion for the issues that are pressing today, and have the vision and ability to lead on the challenges of tomorrow. They are different people to him and the style and approach of the organisation will shift somewhat, but the core elements of the vision this leader established over the last 40 years will remain in place.

That’s leadership.

A short post today. I promise.

Yesterday’s Dilbert made me laugh. As a telco guy I’m familiar with the lengths my industry will go to to create complicated contracts that can ‘obscure’ the total cost of a phone package. It was nice to see that getting a character all to itself in Dilbert.

But what made me laugh most of all was the number of root causes of Information Quality problems which are mentioned in just two boxes of this strip:

Dilbert (c) Scott Adams, 19th April 2009

1. Unlabelled strings of code - this is DATA, not INFORMATION because it lacks CONTEXT to make it ACTIONABLE
2. Web forms or applications not designed to make sense with the information requested (fields too short for the code).
3. Letters looking like numbers (and vice versa).

If your customer can’t complete a rebate process due to any of the above issues (or similar), then your information quality focus is wrong (or non-existent) and your customers will go elsewhere eventually.

Wooing price sensitive customers (and aren’t we all these days?) with rebates or discounts but then having processes which fail to successfully operate due to poor quality planning for quality information and quality outcomes means that any competitor who comes close to you on price but can make the customer experience easier and more transparent is likely to win business from you.

Begin with the end in mind. Isn’t the end you want a happy customer who will buy again from your company (and maybe refer their friends to you)?

The DoBlog is 3 years old today. For 3 years I’ve been sharing my thoughts on topics information qualitarian and other things with a captive audience (I locked a few neighbours in the shed with an old PC and a packet of biscuits). I’ve also managed to attract a reasonable ‘free range’ following.

Obsessive Blogger Award

In that time I’ve won an “attaboy” award from my peers in the Irish blogging community (but never an official Irish Blog Awards nomination… not even a mention in dispatches. Woe is me)

The DoBlog would not be what it is today without the help and support of a number of people:

• Mrs DoBlog. For putting up with me sneaking downstairs in the dead of night when an idea hits me.
• Simon and Fergal over on Tuppenceworth.ie for giving me encouragement to carve out my niche in this space, and for being quick to point out errors or opportunities to improve. And also for the Obsessive Blogger award.
• My colleagues on the Board of Directors of the IAIDQ, for their encouragement and their insights into good stories.
• My colleagues in the Irish Computer Society (ICS)
• Damien Mulley for creating the wonderful motiviator for self-expression that is the Fluffy Link  (an honour I still crave… c’mon Damien… give us a nod…please? Validate me!)
• The Irish Ministers for the Environment since 2006 (Dick Roche TD and John Gormley TD), for the original and on-going issues in the Irish Electoral Register (which got me my award)
• The Irish Ministers for Communications since 2006 (Noel Dempsey TD and Eamon Ryan TD) for the continued failure to implement a post code system in Ireland. 
• My fellow Information Quality Bloggers - of whom there were very few in 2006 but now there is a growing community. (yes, I’m sure I’ve missed some of you out… ping me a mail or a comment to get added to my list here)
  • Jim Harris (ocdqblog.com)
  • Steve Tuck (datanomic’s DQView)
  • Beth Briedenbach (DataGeekGal)
  • Steve Sarsfield (Data Governance and Data Quality Insider)
  • Vincent McBurney (Tooling Around in the IBM InfoSphere)
  • Jill Dyché (JillDyche.com)

Thanks also to everyone who has commented (either on the blog or over beers at a conference), contributed, cajoled or prodded me into writing about information quality issues. I’d particularly like to thank Tom Redman, Larry English, Danette McGilvray, Lwanga Yonke, and my IAIDQ editor-in-chief who prefers to stay in the background but has helped me hone my writing immensely.

Finally, I’d like to thank all the people who create, process or consume information in their day to day existence, and in particular I’d like to thank everyone (me included) who has had a hand in creating some IQ trainwrecks that may have inspired posts here.

If I’ve forgotten anyone… there’s always next year. 

And, to cap things off… here’s a look back at the very first post on The DoBlog on the 18th April 2006.

Introduction

In a previous post, I wrote about how much of what is being pointed to as the causes of some of our economic woes being grounded in weaknesses in the ‘conventional wisdom’ of management which had been questioned by Quality Management thinkers and which were described by Deming in particular as being “Deadly Diseases”.  I argued that, as part of any long term recovery, we would need to look to proven Quality Management principles for guidance and that the lessons of Quality Management (in particular where it is applied to information products and processes) need to be learned now as part of the necessary change.

In this post, I thought I’d turn my attention to just one of Deming’s 14 Points for Transformation, specifically Deming’s Point 7.

Institute Leadership with the aim of supervising people to help them to do a better job

read more…

Image of a Production line. cc by ekasbury on flickr

Introduction

This is a short intro. This post is primarily about the concept of an “information production line” in organisations and the risk we face when we let our view of quality management of information become one of better inspection of defects out of a process. However, I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t also a chance for me to trumpet a good news story about innovation and general cleverness in a young Irish software company in the Information Quality space.

The Information Production Line

Modern businesses rely on the flow of information along a production line. In this production line, data and information are taken, acted upon, combined with other elements, shared, and applied to produce value for the organisation.

Whether it is a sales lead being captured, an order being taken, a product specification being produced, or staff member being hired, information is captured, created, consumed and processed at each stage in the production line from entry to delivered objective.

Everyone and their dog agrees that the best practice and optimum strategy to ensuring quality at minimum cost is to apply your quality metrics and remedial actions as close to the point of first creation as possible, with the ideal being to have zero defects entering your process flow in the first place. Vendors often talk about the “information quality firewall”. Emphasis is placed on the importance of good governance over the information asset to ensure and assure quality. Increasingly emphasis is being placed on the importance of building information quality processes into ETL operations and into data migration strategies.

All of which sounds great and is a significant step forward from where we were 5 years ago. However,  are we simply reaching the point where we are starting to pay to have people running around the edges of our production lines sweeping up the crud that falls off the line or sifting through incoming parts bins to seperate out the “good” information parts from the “bad” information parts.

But is that really managing the quality is is it just being really good and very fast at wielding a big dustpan and brush around our information processes to keep the factory clean without actually tackling the real root causes of poor quality? Given that information is created through the operation of processes that are often many steps removed from the final ERP or CRM system (such as spreadsheet based order forms or product specifications) is it good enough that we are relying on inspection effectively at the end of the line to fix our quality problems? read more…