The DOBlog

Category: Business

A top level category for posts on business issues such as Web2.0 tools and trends, customer service issues etc.

  • Setting tone from the Top

    In the rush to adopt new technologies and new ways of working, particularly When an organisation embarks on a change to systems and processes it is often very easy to get caught up in the whirlwind of enthusiasm for the new technology and the promised benefits of new ways of working.

    Nearly 2 years ago I wrote a post on this blog about the adoption of US style internet campaigning and the use of Web2.0 in Irish politics from an information quality perspective. The scorecard wasn’t good from a data quality perspective. The strategy seemed to be “If Obama can get elected using this Internet thingy, then we need to copy what he did”. No attention seemed to have been paid to the simple fact that a “cut and paste” adoption of a pre-canned solution from elsewhere would not necessarily work.

    2 years on I would have thought that some lessons might have been learned. So when Fine Gael announced they’d “stood down” their finegael.ie website in favour of a more interactive presence in the run up to the election I thought I’d take a quick look. While the Information Quality issues with the form were not too bad, the structure and operation of the site raise a number of concerns from a Data Protection perspective.

    Bluntly – when a US election solution provider rolls up in Europe they will find that they literally ain’t in Kansas anymore, particularly with regards to what you must and must not do with regards to the capture and processing of personal data. Political parties buying these services need to be aware that they are Data Controllers and that the solution providers are Data Processors in the context of the Data Protection Acts 1988 and 2003.

    Failure to set the “tone at the top” and cascade it through the organisation means that often the important questions are not asked (or the answers are ignored).

    Ultimately, in a Data Protection context, you are dealing with issues that can impact on your brand. If you are positioning yourself as being a political party that will “get tough” with vested interests through more effective regulation and enforcement you can’t really start the ball rolling by flouting basic principles of Data Protection law.

    Indeed, back as far as 2004 the Data Protection Commissioner wrote:

    It is important that public representatives and candidates for elective office realise the importance of their obligations under the Acts and that, in so far as responding to legitimate investigations from statutory office holders is concerned, in no sense should they consider themselves above the Law

    In 2009’s annual report the Commissioner also wrote that:

    Rapidly changing technology can be both a threat to this right and the means of protecting it. Building data protection safeguards into new technologies and applications of these technologies remains the best approach. This is as much true of data processing in the “cloud” as it is of a routine development of an IT application in an organisation.

    So… the issues? (more…)

  • Dell Build Quality

    So, I’ve recently invested in a new laptop for work. I got it on Tuesday. Today I noticed that the “J” key on the keyboard had come loose. That’s after less than a week of average use in my home office. The laptop hasn’t been out on the road (yet) and as it is performing well I haven’t had to bash the keyboard in frustration at a 20 minute hang for no reason (like on my old laptop).

    It is probably an easy fix, but it does raise a question about the build quality on Dell laptops when one of the “home” keys for touch typing can come loose so easily.

    But it is just one key. Surely not a big thing? I suppose that is a valid view. But often quality and perception of quality hangs on how the small stuff works.

    • The hotel might be great, but there’s no coffee with the in-room tea and coffee facilities (I like to make a cup of very strong coffee first thing in the morning when travelling for work)
    • The flight might be fine, but the hot sandwich you wanted to order from the attendants wasn’t in stock
    • A broken keyboard stops you typing “jumping jeosophat”

    A while ago I wrote an article for the IAIDQ about the “long tail of risk”, or the long tail of quality. My basic premise in the article was that as you tackle the big issues of quality and risk in Information, the smaller issues become increasingly important, so there is increasing value to be found in the “long tail” of issues.

    That’s why “Zero Defects”, while in part a wonderful slogan, is in fact a valuable goal to set for Quality Management. Setting your sights lower means you are accepting inevitable mediocrity. Why do I say this? Well, simply because the common argument against zero defects is that it is unattainable as a goal (it’s not) and compromises need to be made (they often do). However, if you set your target at 99.9% defect free, you’ll still find compromises being made (“we’ll aim for 60% this quarter and increase again next quarter”) and fudges being introduced.

    I saw a great presentation a few weeks ago from a Clinical Quality lead from the UK NHS. He gave some great statistics as to what 99.999% quality means:

    • 6200 ATM errors per week in the UK
    • 18 fatal airline crashes per year, in the UK
    • 2 children given to the wrong parents every day, in the UK

    So. My faulty key might be one component out of 108 on the keyboard and many thousands in the laptop. But it being broken has soured my experience and reduced my perception of quality of the laptop as a whole. While it isn’t up there with a fatal airline crash, it does bug me.

    (As an aside, it’s interesting to note that Qantas are considering suing Rolls Royce for a minor defect in the engines of the A380 Airbus which lead to oil leakage and an engine fire. It’s only a small thing, but…)

  • Bruce Schneier on Privacy

    Via the Twitters I came across this absolutely brilliant video of Bruce Schneier talking about data privacy (that’s the American for Data Protection). Bruce makes some great points.

    One of the key points that overlaps between Data Protection and Information Quality is where he tells us that

    Data is the pollution problem of the Information Age.  It stays around, it has to dealt with and its secondary uses are what concerns us. Just as… … we look back at the the beginning of the previous century and sort of marvel at how the titans of industry in the rush to build the industrial age would ignore pollution, I think… … we will be judged by our grandchildren and great-grandchildren by how well we dealt with data, with individuals and their relationships to their data, in the information society.

    This echoes the Peter Drucker comment that I reference constantly in talks and with clients of my company where Drucker said that

    So far, for 50 years, the information revolution has centered on data—their collection, storage, transmission, analysis, and presentation. It has centered on the “T” in IT.  The next information revolution asks, what is the MEANING of information, and what is its PURPOSE?

    Bruce raises a number of other great points, such as how as a species we haven’t adapted to what is technically possible and the complexity of control is the challenge for the individual, with younger people having to make increasingly complex and informed decisions about their privacy and what data they put where and why (back to meaning and purpose).

    I really like his points on the legal economics of Information and Data. In college I really enjoyed my “Economics of Law” courses and I tend to look at legalistic problems through an economic prism (after all, the law is just another balancing mechanism for human conduct). I like them so much I’m going to park my thoughts on them for another post.

    But, to return to Bruce’s point that Data is the pollution problem of the Information age, I believe that that statement is horribly true whether we consider data privacy/protection or Information Quality. How much of the crud data that clutters up organisations and sucks resources away from the bottom line is essentially the toxic slag of inefficient and “environmentally unfriendly” processes and business models? How much of that toxic waste is being buried and ignored rather than cleaned up or disposed of with care?

    Is Information Quality Management a “Green” industry flying under a different flag?

  • The Who/What/How and Why

    Data protection and Information Quality are linked in a number of ways. At one level, the EU Directive on Data Protection (95/46/EC) describes the underlying fundamental principles of Data Protection as “Principles for Data Quality”.
    While that is great pub quiz content, it helps to be able to make some more pragmatic and practical links as well.
    On a project a while ago, I was asked to help a client ensure that certain business processes they were putting in place with a partner organisation were data protection compliant. They’d been asked to do this by the partner organisation’s lawyers.
    I leaped into action, assuming that this would be an easy few days of billable. After all, all I needed to know was what data the partner organisation needed when and why to document some recommendations for my client on how to build a transparent and compliant set of policies and procedures for data protection.

    Unfortunately the partner organisation seemed to lack an understanding of the what’s, why’s, when’s, and how’s of their data. This was perplexing as, nice and all as a blank canvas is, sometimes you need to have a sense of the landscape to draw your conclusions against.
    The engagement I had from the partner organisation was focussed on their need to be able to take certain steps if certain circumstances came to pass. While the focus on the goal was commendable, it served to generate tunnel vision on the part of the partner that put a significantly valuable project at risk.
    Goals and objectives (why) are all well and good. But Knowledge Workers need to be able to link these to processes (how) and information needs (what). Deming famously said that if you can’t describe what you are doing as a process then you don’t know what you are doing. I’d go further and say that if you can’t identify the data and information you need to do what you are doing then you can’t be doing it- at least not without massively increased costs and risks (particularly of non-compliance with regulations).
    In the end I made some assumptions about the what’s and how’s of the partner organisation’s processes in order to meet the goal that they had focussed on so narrowly.
    That enabled me to map out an approach to data protection compliance based on a “minimum necessary” principle. And that got my client and their partner over the hump.
    But, from an information quality perspective, not being able to answer the why/why/how questions means you can’t set meaningful measures of “fitness for purpose”. If you don’t know what facts are needed you don’t know if information is missing. if you don’t know what use data will be put to you can’t possibly tell if it is accurate enough.

    So, both Data Protection and Information Quality require people to know the what/why/how questions about their information to allow any meaningful outcome to ensue. If you can’t answer those questions you simply cannot be doing business.
    To paraphrase Deming – we need to work on our processes, not their outcome.

  • Profound Profiling

    Over the past few weeks at a number of events and speaking engagements I’ve found myself talking about the multifaceted benefits of Data Profiling from the perspectives of:

    • Complying with EU Data Protection regulations
    • Ensuring Data Migrations actually succeed
    • Enabling timely reporting of Regulatory risks

    My mantra in these contexts seems to be distilling down to two bald statements:

    • It’s the Information, Stupid.
    • Profile early, profile often.

    But what do I mean by “Data Profiling”? For the purposes of these conversations, I defined “Data Profiling” as being the analysis of the structure and content of  a data set against some pre-defined business rules and expectations. For example, we may want to know how many (or what percentage) of records in a data set are missing key data, or how many have inconsistencies in the data, or how many potential duplicates  there are in the data.

    Why is this of benefit? While a journey of a 1000 miles starts with a single step, that journey must start from somewhere and be headed somewhere. The destination is encapsulated in the expected business rule outcomes and expectations. These outcomes and expectations are often defined by external factors such as Regulatory requirements (e.g. the need to keep information up to date under EU Data Protection principles, or the need to track bank accounts of minors in AML processes) or the strategic objectives of the organisation. The starting point is, therefore, a snapshot of how close you are (or how far you are) from your destination.

    In my conversations, I advised people (none of whom were overly familiar with Information Quality principles or tools) that they should consider investing in a tool that allows them to build and edit and maintain Data Profiling rules and run them automatically. Regular Information Quality geeks will probably guess that the next thing I told them was about  how the profile snapshots could provide a very clear dashboard of how things are in the State of Data in their organisations.

    Just as, when we are embarking on our journey of 1000 miles, it makes sense for us to regularly check our map against the landmarks to make sure we are heading in the right direction. The alternative is to meander down cul de sacs and dead end trails. Which equates in Information Management terms to wasted investment and scrap and rework. So, profile early and profile often seems to be a good philosophy to live by.

    By applying  business rules that relate to your regulatory compliance, risk management, or data migration objectives, you can make Information Quality directly relevant to the goals of the organisation, increasing the likelihood of any changes you bring in becoming “part of the way things get done around here” rather than “yet another darned thing we have to do”.  Quality for the sake of quality was a luxury even in the pre-recession period. In today’s economy it is more important than ever to demonstrate clear value.

    And that is the real profoundity of profiling. Without it you can’t actually know the true value of your Information Asset or determine if your current course of action might turn your Asset into a Liability.

    It’s the Information, Stupid. So Profile Early and Profile Often.

  • Information Quality – Do we have an app for that?

    A few weeks back I got a new iphone. I’d resisted for years, enjoying the pleasures of Nokia and Symbian and the challenges of Palm and Windows Mobile 6.1.

    The fun part for me of any new mobile phone purchase is playing with the new toy  tool and seeing what it can do that my old one couldn’t. For example, back in the 1990s when I did my first upgrade from my first mobile phone (an ericsson model so old that I actually can’t find it referenced on the internet), I found that the new phone was so much smaller and lighter I was actually able to carry it around.

    The irritation I have is when it comes to moving my contacts and synchronising with my various other technologies that hold contact details (laptop, gmail, company address book). Inevitably I wind up with duplication and triplication of contacts. I thought I had the problem licked on the iphone though as there are a number of apps available for managing contact details and reducing duplicates.

    However, having spent a few days using them I am unimpressed as they seem to be making a the traditional rookie mistake in de-duping records – assuming that name matching is enough.

    My brother and father share a given name and a family name. They have different middle initials, different addresses, different phone numbers, different email addresses (all the stuff that you would have in a contact record on your phone). Each application I tried decided that they were a duplicate entry and merged the records. This was annoying.

    In other cases, I have duplicate entries with varying degrees of record completeness. For example, my friend Cathal exists at least 4 times, with one entry having most of his contact details,  with spurious email addresses or social networking nicknames in the others.  The “data quality tool” very kindly merged all the records into the entry that had the least amount of data, and deleting the other records.

    Right now I’m considering firing up talend, datanomic, or informatica tools to dedupe a dump from my iphone and reload it to the phone, and then hopefully that will cascade through the rest of my data stores when I synchronise.

    But I’ll need to draw a data flow map of all of that to make sure.

    Grrrrhhh.

    So. If the existing tools for data quality on the iphone are not up to the jobs, what is missing? The good news is that the data sets are fairly clearly structured (once they get into the iphone), so that is less of a concern than the actual processing of matching and consolidation of records.

    1. Probability scoring across multiple fields would be nice. If two people have the same name but significantly different contact details then it is very probable they are not the same person. A corollary – if there are two records with the same name and one has contact information and the other record has only a name, chances are they are duplicates.
    2. Presentation of matches for review. While the machine can make good guesses where the name and contact details are the same, where there is confusion, the matches should be flagged for a review by the phone user (the “Data Controller”). This way we can avoid having to unpick erroneous matches.
    3. Merging of records should be done on a more structured basis, with mapping of fields being user-customisable based on a standard template. I despair of important contact information being dumped into a notes field (it reminds me too much of when I had to try and migrate data out of a Siebel call centre system a few years ago).
    4. The matching should be able to cater for multi-lingual input (as phones don’t all live and work in english speaking lands).

    There may be other requirements that I am not thinking of here at the moment, but those 4 are a starting point. Perhaps an obliging Data Quality tool vendor will develop an iphone app to a web service for matching contact records.

    Personally, I think that having such a service available would help raise awareness of the value of quality non-duplicated contact information to individuals and to organisations.  However, the app on its own isn’t enough as the average smart-phone user may have personal information held in a variety of places and, just like in a large enterprise with lots of data stores, creating a “Single View of Contact” will require you to understand the flow of your contact information around your tools (i.e. does the phone update the laptop and does the laptop synch to google apps and does google apps synch to the phone?) to avoid the cleanup work being undone the next time you plug your phone into your PC.

    Information Quality Management poses challenges for the enterprise, but can also create friction for the individual trying to manage something as simple as a list of contacts across multiple information stores.

    Do we have an app for that?

  • St. Patrick’s Day Special

    image with bottled water being passed through a kettle and into a sink to give hot water

    I found this on http://www.motivatedphotos.com and it struck me that it is a wonderful metaphor for data integration, information quality, and data governance in many organisations where they are reacting to issues, sustaining silos, or viewing all of this as an IT issue rather than a business challenge, or trying to solve the challenge with series of fragmented department level initiatives.

    Thoughts?

  • Wrong Country Wrong Call

    I’m diverting briefly today from my regular information quality themes to pick up on a debate that has been triggered by Simon over on Tuppenceworth about the latest tsunami of magical thinking that is Your Country Your Call.

    For those of you in Ireland who reside under a rock or in a cave or readers from outside of Ireland, Your Country Your Call is a competition/website which has been set up on (apparently) a Charitable basis with backing of  number of organisations who have, until recently, been happy to be completely behind the scenes for what one must assume are laudable reasons grounded in humility, modesty and a sense of service.

    The goal of YCYC is to find the magic bullet idea that can trigger a renaissance in the Celtic Tiger. Two prizes are on offer for the people who comes up with two ideas and a fund has been established to help develop these mould breaking concepts into  real industries (not a business… an industry).

    Simon has made a number of cogent arguments on Tuppenceworth about the terms and conditions of entry which basically mean that the promoters of YCYC own the winning idea and control the purse strings for the development and direction of the idea. That’s bothersome enough.

    My issue with YCYC is that it is actually a wasted opportunity that has the hallmarks of  the level of thinking that got us into the current financial mess that the country is in.  If we hype it it will happen. If we generate a general sense of it being built at some point in the future they will come. The general gist of the response to criticism thus far has not been a million miles from the comments made about people who raised concerns about the Irish economy just before the wheels fell off. Apparently it is unpatriotic to question who is behind this and how they are being funded.

    Apparently if we all hold hands and think happy thoughts then, just like Peter Pan, we’ll be able to fly, never grow up, and pick pointless fights with our own shadows.

    But I digress. My problem with YCYC is that a large amount of money is being poured into it. It has been confirmed that €2 million is being poured into this, when you take prize funds, the development kitty and the general costs associated with a big media splash.  Even if we are as generous as people are seeming to be and assume that the media splash is being done pro bono, we still have a  figure of around €2 million attached to YCYC (see discussion around this comment on ValueIreland’s website)

    What other type of model might YCYC have pursued to more effectively make use of this pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, other than a competition model the terms and conditions of which read to me like the ones associated with a Battle of the Bands or a phone in competition to win a car?

    How about beefing up funding to EXISTING supports for entrepreneurship in Ireland such as the County Enterprise Boards, LEADER programmes, or the enterprise incubation programmes associated with the various Universities and Institutes of Technology?

    • The upper limit for a feasibility study grant from a CEB is around €5000. That €2million could support 400 studies into new business ideas, each of which would need to have a business model slightly better than “Underpants- Question mark – Profit” to get the funding.
    • Funding for graduate entreprenuers through the CORD scheme provides up to €30k in funding to participants on an enterprise incubation scheme through an Institute of Technology or University. The €2 million would fully fund 66 additional CORD places around the country, with enough over for a big bang press launch. Even if the money was only to partially fund these places, it would help support real innovation and entrepreneurship.

    I would have to ask why the promoter and financial backers of YCYC decided to by-pass the existing support structures that exist for new business ideas in this country. Is it that the organisers thought the existing structures to be inefficient or broken in some way?

    This question is all the more pressing to me given that it seems that a chunk of this money (15%) came from the Irish Government, specifically, it seems, the Dept of Enterprise Trade and Employment. The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment is the Irish Govt. Department which is responsible for County Enterprise Boards. So, rather than fund them more the Dept seems to have been happy to transfer taxpayer’s money to a private initiative.

    At least that is what seems to be suggested by Padraig McKeown’s Twitter reply to Tuppenceworth.ie about which department’s budget the €300k was coming from (warning, you’ll need to scroll down on this to see all the relevant comments). This is also an interesting question given recent comments and posts elsewhere speculating about the future of the County Enterprise Boards.

    • €300k from the Department equates to 60 Feasibility study grants or 10 CORD funded Incubation centre places.

    I’m sure that someone will row in about now with the argument that the Dept can’t just transfer €300k to the CEBs or to the Incubation Centres willy-nilly. But that is exactly what seems to have happened to facilitate a transfer of €300k to YCYC with no (at least as far as I can see) announcement or fanfare that this was being done.

    As for the remaining €1.7million that is in the kitty for YCYC? As each CEB operates as a seperate limited company, there would have been no impediment (that I can see) to these backers simply making the fund available as an Innovation Fund which the CEBs or Incubation Centres could draw on to fund grants and other supports for start-up businesses.

    So. I’m left with a sense that Your Country Your Call is:

    1. A poorly thought out muddle with a worrying lack of clarity about where issues such as Intellectual Property rights to any idea sit (the Terms & Conditions do seem to be clear that the IP vests to the promoters of #YCYC).
    2. An initiative that may be laudable in its intent, but perhaps has not been properly thought through – perhaps the use of existing supports that exist under the auspices of the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment and Enterprise Ireland.
    3. An initiative that the Government Dept (Enterprise Trade & Employment) responsible for promoting enterprise and employment thought worthwhile investing a significant sum of money into an initiative which keeps the IP to any idea, at what can only be the expense of existing programmes for Enterprise support that exist in the country or, at the very least, at the expense of beefing up those programmes in a structured and sustainable way.
    4. YCYC is a wonderful feat of PR puffery with little real potential to deliver the economic kickstart that is required in Ireland, but doesn’t the website look pretty.
    5. The priority of the government and the sponsors of this initiative is to promote a forum for fuzzy thinking and “end of the rainbow” speculation at the expense of the existing supports for business start-ups which have a track record of supporting local SME development around the country.

    At best it is a noisome distraction and puffery that might, by some sheer accident of chance, uncover a true gem of an idea (that the innovator of which cannot grasp the value of) which will restart the economic engines. At worst, it is a noisome distraction that has diverted funding from existing enterprise support frameworks that exist in the country, apparently with the blessing of the responsible government minister.

    Of course, I could be totally wrong.  Maybe the Department of Enterprise had €300k that was sitting around doing nothing and which the CEBs and University Campus incubators had said no to when it was offered to them. Maybe the €1.7 million war chest was touted around the Campus Incubators and the CEBs but was politely declined as well. Perhaps the President of DCU could shed some light on this as he is on the Steering board of YCYC?

    Maybe the terms and conditions of YCYC will not put off serious thinkers with real viable ideas to shake things up in the economy which they’ll be happy to part with for a hundred grand.

    Personally, I’ll continue with my strategy of knuckling down to graft on my business plan, keeping an eye on costs, and working to build a set of services and products that, while not changing the world, will change that part of it that I’ve spotted needs changing, with a view to creating value and generating employment for others over time.

    It’s my country. It’s my call.

  • Valentines Data Quality Post

    I’ve been inspired by Jim Harris’ excellent post about how companies need to love their data this Valentines Day, where he uses 1980s song lyrics to argue his case.  My personal view is that the 1980s, with a few exceptions, were a lost decade for music. So I trawled through my ipod and found this great song about a CEO’s tortured love for information.

    I give you “DATA” by Derek and the Dominoes.

    What will you do when you get data

    Loaded into your new BI?

    You’ve been running reports

    that don’t make sense for too long

    but you can’t blame your poor BI.

    Data, you’ve got me on my knees

    Data, I’m begging darlin’ please.

    Data, darlin’ won’t you ease my worried mind.

    I tried to get some information.

    But the data lets me down.

    Like a fool, I fell in love with you,

    But the duff  data turns my whole world upside down

    Data, you’ve got me on my knees

    Data, I’m begging darlin’ please.

    Data, darlin’ won’t you ease my worried mind.

    Let’s make the best of the information.

    Before I finally go insane

    please don’t say we’ll never find a way

    or tell me that all BI’s in vain

    Data, you’ve got me on my knees

    Data, I’m begging darlin’ please.

    Data, darlin’ won’t you ease my worried mind.

    Of course, if we look further into the archives we can find references to poor quality information dotted through the master works of the blues greats.

    • BB King’s under rated “The referential integrity’s gone”, later rereleased as “The Thrill is gone”
    • John Lee Hooker’s “I’d got my data workin’ (but it just don’t work on you)”, a song about a failed data migration later reworked and re-released as “I’ve got my Mojo workin’”.
    • Robert Johnson’s lost recording “I’ve got Data on my mind”.
    • The Blues Brothers “Everybody needs some data (to love)”.

    Even older than that, a 7 year old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote the timeless classic “Twinkle Twinkle little infomraiton record, how I wonder how complete and consistent you are“. Unfortunately his father made him rewrite it as a childish ditty about the stars. Astronomy’s gain was our loss.

    The list is endless, proving that the struggle with quality information to drive business value is as timeless as good music.

  • Personal Data – an Asset we hold on Trust

    There has been a bit of a scandal in Ireland with the discovery that Temple St Children’s Hospital has been retaining blood samples from children indefinitely without the consent of parents.

    The story broke in the Sunday Times just after Christmas and has been picked up as a discussion point on sites such as Boards.ie.  TJ McIntyre has also written about some of the legal issues raised by this.

    Ultimately, at the heart of the issue is a fundamental issue of Data Protection Compliance and a failure to treat Personal Data (and Sensitive Personal Data at that) as an asset (something of value) that the Hospital held and holds on trust for the data subject. It is not the Hospital’s data. It is not the HSE’s data. It is my child’s data, and (as I’m of a certain age) probably my data and my wife’s data and my brothers’ data and my sisters-in-laws’ data…..

    It’s of particular interest to me as I’m in the process of finishing off a tutorial course on Data Protection and Information Quality for a series of conferences at the end of February (if you are interested in coming, use the discount code “EARLYBIRD” up to the end of January to get a whopper of a discount). So many of the issues that this raises are to the front of my mind.

    Rather than simply write another post about Data Protection issues, I’m going to approach this from the perspective of Information as an Asset which has a readily definable Life Cycle at various points in which key decisions should be taken by responsible and accountable people to ensure that the asset continues to have value.

    Another aspect of how I’m going to discuss this is that, after over a decade working in Information Quality and Governance, I am a firm believer in the mantra: “Just because you can doesn’t mean you should“. I’m going to show how an Asset Life Cycle perspective can help you develop some robust structures to ensure your data is of high quality and you are less likely to fall foul of Data Protection issues.

    And for anyone who thinks that Data Protection and Data Quality are unrelated issues, I direct you to the specific wording in the heading of Chapter 2, Section 1 of the Directive 95/46/EC. (more…)