Between you, obviously. I’m not made of money.

It is unfortunate that you can’t make it because you’re the first person from your party to contact me about this issue and you seem to have given a lot of thought to the potential for ‘joined up thinking’ that manages citizen information across the traditional silos of Departmental functions.

As for it going over your head -you dived in at the deep end, you’ll learn to swim in time!

There are a number of good sites you can reference for information on Information Quality Management

http://www.iaidq.org
http://www.iqnetwork.org (the Irish Community of Practice for the IAIDQ run in association with the ICS).
http://www.infoimpact.com
http://www.dataqualitysolutions.com

There are some broken links on iqnetwork.org at present as I am transferring from our old host but we have downloadable presentations that explain a lot of good stuff about Information Quality Management.

I will be posting some links to good reference books also in time.

In particular, I share your concern that we are going to burn money on scrap and rework without tackling fundamental flaws in the process. That’s why scrap & rework doesn’t add value in the long run and only fixes today’s problem, not tomorrows.

Next time you are coming to Dublin, let me know and I will try to hook up with you if you want to learn more.

I’m glad we can agree on so many points.

One of my biggest annoyances about the electoral register is the duplication of effort and of data. A great deal of effort goes into keeping data up to date for the Dept of Social Welfare, the Revenue Commisioners, and many other Government agencies. It takes a large amount of effort from local authorities to keep the register even as up to date as it currently is. The data is available, and it is kept up to date, so I would hope the Govenment would be able to hook in to it.

On your point about the legitimacy of Automatic Registration, I would accept that this is open to question. I believe that voting should be somewhat compulsory (together with the right to spoil your ballot or return a blank vote, and improvements in access to the polls). I would like to see the Government connect receipt of state services (eg subsidised education, social welfare) to citizens making at least the basic effort to turn up at the polls (or submit a postal or proxy vote, for those unable to make it on the day). That’s a topic for another day, and may serve only to distract the debate. If it does, I apologise, but it connects with my views on automatic registration.

The PPS number has the potential to streamline the delivery of state services, and all interaction of citizens with Government. We need to assess this with regard to all the issues including Privacy, Data Integrity and Value For Money. I’m afraid we’re going to see money thrown away on a project on the Electoral Register, which will then need duplicated effort when they move to assess the real value and potential of government use of the PPSN.

Unfortunately I will be unable to make it on Friday, as I am hosting a charity event in Letterkenny for the Donegal Hospice. The talk would be beneficial to my MSc programme. I also missed the recent Web2.0 event in Dublin.

Again, thanks for addressing my points. I’m glad we can agree on so much (although much of what you said still goes over my head!)