The DOBlog

Category: Business

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

  • Golden Databases – Caveat Emptor

    I was very interested to read a great post by fellow Irish blogger Damien Mulley in which he wrote:

    …Most companies have massive databases of customer details that are sitting there, gathering dust. Why not work on those databases and poll your customers …

    The context of Damien’s comment was a larger piece about using key assets in your organisation to drive up business or drive down costs. Damien rightly points out that information (on customers) is a valuable asset that most companies simply don’t have working for them.

    He references the Obama campaign, which many hail for using all the bells, whistles and tweets of Web2.0 but which was ultimately driven by good management and application of the campaign’s information assets.

    He’s perfectly correct. I wrote about exactly that topic here (November 2008) and have touched on it in other posts and articles. Unfortunately, Damien’s “Golden Database” needs to come with a big Caveat Emptor. (more…)

  • Is Info Quality Management a Recession Proof Profession?

    Over the past few weeks I’ve been pondering whether or not Information Quality Management is a recession proof profession. Those of you who know me will probably guess that my recent departure from “big company” employment was one of the seeds to this line of thought. Another was the interesting findings contained in the IAIDQ’s recent report on Salary and Job Satisfaction in the Information/Data Quality profession (you can find a copy of the report here).

    First off, the salary survey made for interesting reading because it pegged the average salary (in US dollars) for an Information Quality professional at just over $95000 (EUR 72k approx).  In Europe, the average was $85000 (EUR 65k approx). Cripes, I was a bit less well paid in the old job than I had thought. At those salary levels, the information quality professionals were, overall, satisfied with their lot.

    78% of IDQ professionals say they feel either secure or very secure about their current position, indicating remarkable confidence despite the current difficult economic times

    So… is this one of those mythical recession proof professions?

    Data Data Everywhere….

    We’re fond of saying it but it is true. We live in an increasingly “informationalized” world. Strip away most business models now and you will find that the real value is generated by the smooth flow of information around an organisation. Buying a laptop from Dell? That’s an information flow that needs to pass with out glitch to a factory in Poland (alas no longer Ireland) and also out to suppliers in China and elsewhere to ensure that the bits all arrive together so you receive delivery of a laptop to your door. And let’s not forget about the flow of information about your finance arrangement to fund the purchase. Try to get a phone line connected and you are relying on the quality of information that the call centre agent has about what services are available in your area. Buy a coffee on your debit card… The list goes on.

    Information and data are increasingly being recognised as critical assets to the organisation. Whether it is in Tom Redman’s “Data Driven”, Tom Fisher’s “The Data Asset” or on blogs or webinars, we see an increasing presentation of data as an asset in terms that C-level executives should get. But this isn’t enough (for reasons we’ll come to in a minute)

    But on a more personal level I’ve been busier since I left my old job then I have been at almost any time in my career. I am finding more people connecting with me through the IAIDQ (and other forums) and I am sensing a strong feeling of postive attitude which is far removed from “magical thinking” but is instead grounded on a very clear understanding of how poor quality information contributed to the mess we are in and an equally clear vision of how effective management of the quality of information can help get us out of this situation and, more importantly, help us to better manage the risk of it happening again.

    The Problem…

    The problem we face now as a profession, and this was highlighted very clearly by the IAIDQ’s study, is that of clearly communicating to our employers, customers, and wider audiences, the value of good quality information. 84% of the IAIDQ’s respondents said that this was their biggest challenge. If we face that challenge in a downturn that caused us to look at the relative importance of the assets in our organisation, how can we hope to overcome that challenge now that greenshoots are breaking out all over?  (As I write this Germany is now out of recession, France is on the way, Eurozone is heading positive)

    But Gartner recently shared (well, in 2006) with us this prediction:

    Through 2011, 75 percent of organizations will experience significantly reduced revenue growth potential and increased costs due to the failure to introduce data quality assurance and coordinate it with their data integration and metadata management strategies (0.7 probability).

    In physics, “friction” is the name given to the opposing force that slows the movement of a body. The problem with friction is that it requires you to expend greater effort to achieve the same result. The laws of Conservation of Energy tell us that that extra energy is lost in the form of heat. (Think about the last time you watched your local scout troop light a fire by rubbing two sticks together. Didn’t they look out of breath when they’d finished?)

    More recent Gartner research, published on the 11th of August 2009 [2009 Gartner FEI Technology Study Reveals FinanceManagers’ Perspectives on Data Quality, www.gartner.com] finds that:

    Three-quarters of the respondents consider data quality problems a constraint on, or a barrier to achieving, business success. Even so, only 41% of their organizations have a formal improvement program — the rest are doing nothing formally to improve matters.

    So. There we have it. Confirmation that poor quality information is adding friction to businesses. And only 41% have a formal programme in place to reduce that friction (and even then, a programme does not equate to successful outcomes).

    While there are some signs of the global economy recovering, it is clear that poor quality information will add friction to the mix, potentially slowing down the pace of recovery. And the last thing you need when trying to push uphill is friction working against you. Organisations who have to carry the non-value-adding costs of poor quality information will be unable to reap the “first mover” advantages or seize the “low cost operator” niches in the post melt-down market place. Organisations which have invested in reducing the friction will benefit.

    In my opinion, there is an opportunity right now for information quality professionals to develop some clear messages about the importance of information quality and its value to your organisation and the wider economy.

    • To compete in a “lean” way , organisations are investing in Business Intelligence. Without regard to the underlying quality of the information being pulled together, this can rapidly descend into “Business UNtelligence”. Issues such as missing or incomplete data, or even the existence of “non-standard” characters like apostrophes in surnames or email addresses can cause problems in your BI reporting.
    • To ensure compliance with current and as yet emerging regulations, organisations will need to pay closer attention to the information flows within their walls and between them and their partners. Closer validation of data, increased focus on internal integrity of facts (e.g. does the salary figure on the loan application align with other credit information available to a lender) will likely become more important. These are all information quality based initiatives.
    • Risk Management – a colleague who specialises in Risk Management consulting shared with me recently that “Can’t rely on our information” is a risk that keeps cropping up again and again in his risk workshops with large businesses. This is borne out by an Information Age survey (referenced in Tom Fisher’s new book) which found that 32% of companies who responded cited Risk Management (compliance and regulatory issues) as a key driver of their Information Quality initiatives.
    • Changes in the quality of information only take place through effective management decisions. Either you decided to invest in managing your information quality effectively, or you effectively decide NOT to manage your information assets.

    These are just a few areas where there is friction caused by poor quality information – I welcome suggestions for others.

    By removing or reducing the friction, the information quality expert and their team can help businesses seize new ground or at least hold their own as the global economy recovers slowly. By reducing friction, you reduce the amount of wasted energy that is lost in the form of heat.

    Conversely, if you are trying to get your information quality programme jumpstarted, one good way is to figure out how to focus all that lost heat in one place to start a small fire under someone.

    Just answer the question!

    But back to the question at hand… is Information Quality Management a Recession Proof profession?

    I think the answer is yes and no.

    It is yes in that, insofar as any profession can be recession proof, information quality practitioners and vendors have seemed to weather the storm quite well recently. Furthermore, down turns inevitably focus attention on areas of avoidable cost and waste within organisations. Sensible ones look to remove that cost surgically – a process that in and of itself requires sound information. Ultimately, if a business is trading it is creating and consuming information in order to make or deliver its products. Therefore, even in a down turn there is a role ofr the information quality professional. The relatively high job satisfaction ratings in the IAIDQ’s survey suggest that IQ professionals may have been biding their time in organisations and building their value cases slowly.

    However, the answer is no if we think to what might happen once recovery sets in. In the absence of a crisis, how do we present the value case for continued or renewed investment in information quality? In order to ensure success in the good times we as a profession must convince senior management of the value of reducing information friction in our businesses. While it is easy to point at the pile of rubble and say “If we’d had better quality information we could have avoided that”, it is more challenging to show how those same skills, tools and approaches can build a shiny new edifice on the foundations of that rubble.

    So, information quality management is recession proof, but only if we continue to define and refine the value proposition for better quality information within our organisations and in the wider global context as well.

  • IQ in the Real World (a leadership return)

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

  • #BGas- Bord Gais loses 75000 customer records

    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)? (more…)

  • The Leaving Cert exam fiasco

    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?

  • IAIDQ Festival del IDQ Bloggers – Episode #2

    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!

  • The Customer perspective on Information Quality

    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.com
    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)?

  • Happy Birthday DoBlog

    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
    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)

    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.

  • Next: You’re a Leader – Lead

    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 (more…)

  • End to End in the the Information Production Line

    Image of a Production line. cc by ekasbury on flickr
    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? (more…)