The DOBlog

Author: Daragh

  • An idea pinched from Tuppenceworth

    Tuppenceworth have started doing ‘Tag Clouds’ to visualise the frequency of words etc in political manifestos and speeches in the run up to the Irish General Election.

    Ho-hum I thought… wouldn’t it be interesting to do the same on the emerging commercial Information Quality Blogs (and perhaps other commentary in the area – it works on any text) to see what sort of themes emerge in the tags (ie commonly occuring words). The bigger the font the more frequent the occurence. I’m making no inferences based on the ‘cloud’ – I’ll leave that up to you. This one is based on a post by Garry Moroney of Informatica on their blog site.

    created at TagCrowd.com

  • Side effects of the Blog Awards?

    It would seem that the IT thought police in my employer were paying attention to the Blog awards. For a long time our web filters only blocked tools like blogger.com and typepad. Sites like Tuppenceworth who operated their blog on their own domain (like the DoBlog too) flew beneath the radar.

    Not any longer.

    As of today I’ve noticed that the venerable Tuppenceworth has been blocked, as have all incarnations of Twenty Major. It is possible that it is just a co-incidence that this has happened a week after the Irish Blog Awards, but I’m far to cynical to think that. I’m donning the TinFoil Hat of Conspiracy as I suspect that the media profile given to some of the former ‘stealth blogs’ in the run up to the Blog Awards may have alerted some policy makers to the fact that there’s more than one way to blog.

    Hopefully I’ll be able to keep updating the DoBlog and the IQNetwork site after hours from the office. Failing that I’ll just have to trawl for some wireless broadband connectivity.

    In the mean time…

    ###Updated###
    Tupp’worth isn’t blocked anymore… looks like a random burp from the web filters. Twenty is still barred though, more’s the pity.

  • Count down to an Information Quality clash?

    Daylight Savings time starts in the US on the 11th of March – that’s next week. DST doesn’t start in Ireland or the UK until the 25th of March. The US change comes about under an Energy Protection Act passed last year.

    Microsoft are warning people in the US that their PCs won’t automatically update (not that mine ever did) and are assuring people that VISTA already handles it.

    So what will happen if your PC has the incorrect locale settings (data)? Will that have triggered it to download the various patches for Windows and Outlook? Have European firms checked that they have no dependencies on US daylight savings time in other software or calculations?

    I’m probably fretting over nothing but seemingly innocuous base data can, if not managed correctly, have a big impact on business processes and on people’s lives.

    My advice – check your locale settings even if you’re using a Mac.

  • Back again… and with a new face too.

    The DoBlog is back again, and in the style of Bond villains it has another new face. The old one was functional-ish and quite search engine friendly but it was a tad bland and ugly and didn’t wrap text very well. Frankly I put my failure to be nominated for any of the Irish Blog Awards down to the poor design 😉 . Next year I am hoping to wrestle TwentyMajor for a 2 litre bottle of Um-Bongo – well done to Twenty for winning again.

    I’ve been busy with the IQNETWORK website (www.iqnetwork.org) getting it bang up to date and also running the 4th Information Quality Forum in DCU. I’m also lecturing in DCU as well, so I have very little time for this blog which is still more of a hobby than a way of life.

    Must also try and find time to get back into training with the Aikido club…. (sorry Sensei).

    So much to do… must set up a category for ‘time management’….

  • In My Life…

    Perhaps it is that I am now on the cusp of my fourth decade as Daragh O Brien that I am getting a bit sentimental. Perhaps it is the early onset of a mid-life crisis that has me pondering how I have come to this point in my life as the person that I am. At least I hope it is an early onset mid-life crisis; the alternative means I’d need to get the finger out pronto and start achieving things.

    Maybe I’ve been listening to too much Talking Heads and I am wondering “who am I and how did I get here”, a question we all ask at least Once in a Lifetime. Perhaps I’ve too much Beatles going through my head when I think of the title for this post.

    So who am I? It seems that I’m a nice guy, who people respect and trust to do important things. Like being a husband, or a friend, or a manager of complex and sensitive projects. I’m someone that people come to for advice and to try and help them solve problems. At least, that’s the sense of me that I have gotten in the last week or so since I crossed over into a new demographic. My friends or family will surely comment below and deflate any ego that I may have here (that’s why they’re my friends and family).

    I seem to have wound up a noted (and possibly respected) contributor to the global community of Information Quality Management professionals. I am a teacher. I am a student. Above all else I am one who seeks to learn and seeks to understand the why and the root cause of significant outcomes.

    I may even play my music on the run, who knows.

    From my point of view, my life as it is now is a significant outcome. And how did I get here? How have I travelled from being the nerdy jock (I vividly remember in my 5th year of high school running from captaining a national league basketball team in crucial game (that we won) to captaining my high school debating team in a national semi final debate) to being the person I am today?

    It has been, in the words of Pete Townshend, “an amazing journey”. I’ve meditated and pondered on this for a few days. I realised I was doing that when the answer popped into my head – a bit like spam from the Universe.. “You have won a nugget of enlightenment and a soupcon of self-awareness. To claim your prize…”. The answer isn’t quite what I would have expected if I had expected to have asked the question and had a concious expectation. I know that that last sentence is a bit Rumsefeldian and could rank as a known unknown (you know I’ve said it but you are buggered if you know what it meant). I apologise.

    Who I am now and what I am achieving boils down to a few small things, and one or two big ones. Most surprisingly to me is the layer of connections between things I am and I do now and experiences, events and people from my past. And the overwhelming urge I have is to say thank you.

    I could start right back at the beginning with my parents in the early spring of 1975 (I’m a January 1976 baby). But that would make me the Kevin Costner of blogs with a production rich in detail but lacking in toilet breaks. ‘Dances with Nerds’ how are ye. 😉

    Instead I’ll start at the now and work back. Right now, I have a network of friends and acquintances all of whom have helped shape me as much as my family might have had. I have ‘strong ties’ and I have ‘weak ties’ and a sizeable number of ‘middling ties’. Not all of these people are my generation. Some are older. Some are younger. All of them are precious to me as people because of the gifts they have given me.

    Interestingly, many of these people have come into my life and hung around in circumstances that link them to some big stresses and traumas in my life. For example, the friend who encouraged me to first publish writings on the Web and who constantly challenges my thinking on things in good ways is a guy I met through a mutual friend who I went out with for a while in college.

    Through that person I started hanging around in the office of the college newspaper that Simon wrote for. That relationship ended….hmmmm… awkwardly. Due to other baggage in my life I didn’t take it too well and became a less nice person for a while and, in hindsight, abused people around me as much as I abused myself with drinking and acting the bollox and basically not being someone you could rely on.

    However, the friendship with Simon endured because we had hit it off. Simon eventually went on to set up Tuppenceworth.ie and encouraged me to publish my first piece there back in 2001 – “The Celtic Tiger Ate My Chocmallows“. I then went on to bore Tuppenceworth’s readers with guff about the impact of poor data quality in the electoral register elections and referenda in Ireland back in 2002 – a theme that has dominated this blog since last summer.

    I think it is unlikely that Simon and I would have become such good friends if we hadn’t had that link. Although we share many interests, I was a proto-hack’ in college – immersed in the shallow end of college politics, debating societies and the petty chicanery that that entailed. Simon was more honourable than that and would probably have (rightly) dismissed me as yet another gobshite if we hadn’t had the chance to share a few million laughs in a tiny office under the stairs in the Arts Block.

    So thank you to that mutual friend who linked us, now long gone.

    Anita was a young woman I also met in College through two muppets I had known from school (one from primary school and the other from high school). Anita and Simon. met, fell in love, and I had the pleasure of being a groomsman at their wedding a few years ago. Now they’re awaiting the arrival of their first child.

    And all because Anita met two guys who knew me and as a result bumped into Simon who I hung around with. So, thank you to Trev and Sully for seeking me out as some sort of Oracle of knowledge about how college worked. I think I pulled that off for about 20 minutes and then it just became coffee and smokes in the common areas a dozen times a day.

    The best man at the wedding was Fergal. He is another guy who challenges my thinking. He has written some stuff with me and has presented at an international conference on Information Quality with me. He has helped me refine my understanding of the law as it applies to the management of information quality – a theme that I keep coming back to in lectures, articles and conference presentations and which is taking me to the UK (again) and possibly the US later this year to present. He is Simon’s best friend since childhood. While Fergal was a debater from another college, without Simon vouching for me as a friend, he probably would have dismissed me as just another L&H gobshite hanger-on and gotten on with his life.

    (more…)

  • Information Quality in Ireland

    Two quick nuggets on IQ in Ireland…

    Firstly, the IQ Network are reporting that  we have had a Court ruling that may have implications for Information Quality… we’ll track them and keep you posted.

    Secondly… The electoral register is still snafu’d despite the efforts of the Minister for the Environment. Again, expect to see more on that here and at www.iqnetwork.org. The Sunday Tribune had some good stuff on this over the weekend, so I’ll be linking to that and posting a commentary.

  • In rememberance of those who have gone before us

    A disturbing thing happened to me this evening.

    I was out for a few drinks with an associate and his wife (who suffered through an evening of nerdvana as we discussed data quality and Dr Who). Nothing too disturbing there.

     However, at one point in the night I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror of the bar we were in. What I saw was a round and smiling head perched atop a suit, a shirt and tie and a v-neck jumper. But what pushed my mental gears into over-drive was the tell-tale clip of a Parker pen in my suit jacket pocket.

    All men fear that one day they will turn into their fathers. I seem to have bypassed that by turning into my grandfather.

     And, much like Marcel Proust’s madeleine cakes, it was the little detail of the Parker pen that gave me that “oh shit” moment.

    For all that he gave me, and all that I should have taken while I had the chance, I thank my parental grandfather.

    For the rest… I thank god that I only inherited a genetic dress code from my paternal side, and that my love of music and playing music I can still share with my maternal grandfather.

    Have any of you dear readers had similar moments of “o jaysus I’ve turned into… “?

  • Sorry I’ve been away

    the DobBlog has been neglected of late. I have been busy upgrading and tweaking the website of the IQ Network (www.iqnetwork.org), a Community of Practice of the IAIDQ run in partnership with the IAIDQ (www.iaidq.org).

    Please toddle over there to take a look – the IQ Network has a very full calendar of events for 2007 in the pipeline and we’re looking forward to another year of delivering value to our members.

    Our first event is on the 22nd of February in DCU… see www.iqnetwork.org for details!

  • The Tuppenceworth Paper Round (a slight return)

    Oh good grief, Hendrix is probably spinning in his grave…

    Simon over at Tuppenceworth has announced he’s been invited to take part in Leviathan this Thursday. This is a nice ‘attaboy’ for the gang at Tuppenceworth from David McWilliams et al. Or else it is a trap given the number of journos who’ll be in the room.

    Just in case it is a trap, I thought I’d trundle out the Journo Code of Practice – the Code of Conduct of the NUJ – for Simon to recite in the manner of Indiana Jones in “Indy and James Bond save the world“ or whatever that movie was called.

    The full code of conduct can be found HERE. For the purposes of this post, I’ll only focus on the salient points…

    From the Code of Conduct:

    2.) A journalist shall at all times defend the principle of the freedom of the press and other media in relation to the collection of information and the expression of comment and criticism. He/she shall strive to eliminate distortion, news suppression and censorship.

    The reaction of some journalists to the Paper Round (ie ‘whatwouldbloggersknow’) is contrary to the spirit if not the letter of this section of the NUJ code of conduct. The Bloggers in the Paper Round were operating in another medium (not print or traditional broadcast) but they were open about how they collected their information and presented fact-based criticisms based on what they found, as well as inviting comment and a right to reply. Comments on the professionalism of bloggers vs that of professional journalists missed the point entirely – a better response more in keeping with the Code of Conduct might have been to get involved, help refine the methodology and publicise the process.

    The fact that much of what the Paper Round found given the reliance of some newspapers on advertorial or reguritated press releases could viewed as “distortion” or “news suppression” is worthy of mention. However, point number 9 of the Code of Conduct smacks one more blatantly between the eyes, given the prevalance of advertorial:

    9.) A journalist shall not lend himself/herself to the distortion or suppression of the truth because of advertising or other considerations.

    Given the findings of the Paper Round in relation to Opinion pieces masquerading as ‘real news’, imagine my surprise when I found the following in the NUJ Code of Conduct:

    3.) A journalist shall strive to ensure that the information he/she disseminates is fair and accurate, avoid the expression of comment and conjecture as established fact and falsification by distortion, selection or misrepresentation.

    Based on my reading of the Code of Conduct (and I am just an ignorant blogger), the Tuppenceworth Paper Round raise some interesting questions about the state of Irish journalism and print media in particular. I am heartened that it would seem that the Tuppenceworth approach is actually in alignment with the spirit of the NUJ code of conduct in that they published facts and provided a right of reply.

    Those in print media who interpreted the Paper Round as an attack on journalists by bloggers missed the point. Those who attacked bloggers, or the paper round, in print may have acted in breach of their own code of conduct.

    More worryingly for me is the question of, if journalists and print media aren’t producing a ‘product’ for the public (the customer) or one that conforms to their own Union’s code of conduct just who is the piper calling the tune?

    Perhaps in 2007 the NUJ might collaborate with Tupp’worth to devise a more structured methodology for measuring standards in Irish journalism and the quality of what is actually printed in Irish print media against both the expectation of the consumer (Seamus Q Newspaperreader) and the NUJ Code of Conduct.

    In the meantime, I hope that Simon over at Tupp’worth makes use of the Code of Conduct if he is ambushed. 

    And as for the DOB-log… from January I’ll be adopting the NUJ Code of Conduct for all posts and comments on this blog. If it’s good enough for the journos, it’s good enough for a humble blogger like me.

  • Electoral Reg (A slight return)

    OK. In an attempt to make this interesting to the kids, I’m ripping off Jimi Hendrix lyrics.

    The Sunday Business Post reported over the weekend that up to 170,000 people may have been taken of the Electoral Register in error. Apparently politicians of all hues are trading war stories of bungled clean ups on the electoral register. Apparently, amongst other things, entire housing estates have been taken off the register and dead people have resurrected and re-registered to vote. The Minister in question, Dick Roche, has even had to acknowledge that he knows of an incident of a disappearing housing estate in Wicklow (wouldn’t it be ironic if it was up on Turlough Hill muses the author, mixing his Irish geography).

    The Fianna Faíl TD for Meath, Johnny Brady, has commented that:

    • huge numbers of elderly voters have been removed from the Register in his area
    • no letters were left to inform people they were being taken off the Register (or at least people don’t recall getting such a letter).

    According to Mr Brady “Some of the field officers who called to houses decided that if they were not at home, they were taken off”. This suggests a degree of inconsitency in the approaches between local authorities… in my earlier post on when the people came knocking I pointed out that they hadn’t spoken to me, but as of today I’m still on the Register. Therefore it would seem that different rules are being applied in Meath and Wexford.

    Divergences in work practices in maintaining the Register is one of the contributing root causes to the whole original mess. Anecdotes of Local Authorities using the Obituraries in the local and national papers to identify dead people were mentioned in dispatches not so long ago.

    And the treatment of the dead is clearly one of the key root causes for the original shambles… with 30% of Waterford’s voters being members of the daisy pushing brigade. Of course, this discrepancy is matched by the inconsistency between the numbers on the register now and the population as measured by the Census.

    Good grief. What a mess.

    Way back in the summer I wrote that the proposal to rebuild the register by going door to door would not address the actual deficiencies in the register. The key approach should have been to tackle the root causes – such as wildly varying work practices in different local authority areas and then to push out cleansing of the register. This should have been done in a clear and transparent manner.

    However, at this point it is important to bear in mind that often the answer you get to a problem isn’t necessarily the answer you want. The Opposition parties seem to have had an expectation that there would be no collateral damage in the clean up of the register. A cliche involving eggs, omlettes and breakage springs to mind. Rather than engage in debate based on anecdote the Opposition parties should try to ‘speak with data’ and to identify clear examples of where people have been taken off the register in error and get evidence of what process or inaction on the part of the Minister or Local Authorities lead to the error.

    For example, Gay (Gabriel) Mitchell (Fine Gael TD) reported his personal experience where he wrote to the Local Authority officers responsible for the Register to tell them that there were two people resident at his address with the same name (his son is also called Gabriel). However only one Gabriel Mitchell was left on the Register. Why? Did Deputy Mitchell forget to include the respective dates of birth? Did his letter fall through the cracks?

    Dick Roche attempted to clean the register by running en masse a broken process. Throwing people at it to perform door to door checks did not address key root causes (like the fact that you can’t change your name on the Electoral Registration form – it only allows for changes of address). When you throw into the mix that the door to door checkers:

    1. Don’t hang around long enough to talk to people (in my personal experience)
    2. Call during the day when people are at work (might that explain why entire estates in the commuter belt of Dublin have disappeared off the Register?)
    3. Seem to have an inconsistent practice as to how to deal with people who don’t answer the door

    then this whole process is a phenomonal white elephant that may have served to make a bad situation slightly worse.

    However – with regard to people who have been taken off the Register in error… there is a question of personal responsibilty here. If they wish to be registered to vote then they should check the register at their local libraries or Garda stations or online (if they are in the 50.7% of people who have internet access) and get themselves registered.

    If you are not in you can’t win. If you’re not on the register you can’t complain about the government you get. And by my reckoning that’s what we have at the moment.