The 9th Doctor

BBC’s iconic series of the same name. In a genre that often falls for the easy charms of technology to drive a story, The Doctor (a 930 year old, two-hearted time travelling Time Lord from the Planet Gallifrey) invariably highlights and thrives on the Human Factor – the innate potential, ingenuity and power of the human beings (a lesser species) who he befriends, protects, and travels with.

Over the years I’ve tried to adopt and adapt some of the principles of The Doctor’s approach to leading Information Quality and Governance change projects:

There is nothing that can’t be solved by confectionery

The good Doctor in a number of his incarnations (4th, 6th, 7th, and 8th as memory serves)  was renowned for, in moments of high tension, proffering some confectioneries (specifically Jelly Babies) to help lighten the mood and distract thought. They were an incredible tool that enabled him to befriend others and buy time to develop cunning plans. Doctor Who Jelly Babies (video montage)

The key lesson is that it is often useful to have a “quirky” way to break down barriers and get conversations going. The Doctor has Jelly Babies. I’ve used various props. Kathy Hunter of DQM Group made extensive use of home baked cakes and biscuits when she was in a previous role to help open conversations.

It’s Bigger on the Inside

The Doctor’s space ship/time machine is a Blue Box. It is a Blue Box because the advanced circuitry that let it change appearance to blend in in different timelines got stuck on “Blue Box” on a trip to London around 1963 (the year the series was first broadcast). The thing about the Blue Box is that it is “bigger on the inside”, a fact that The various companions’s to The Doctor remark on whenever they enter the Blue Box for the first time. Bigger on the Inside (Youtube) . Invariably, The Doctor takes the surprise in his stride, often forgetting how big a shot it is to people when they see the size of his Blue Box for the first time.

The Doctor’s Blue Box is called the TARDIS, which stands for Time and Relative Dimensions in Space. By being able to engineer time and space The Doctor’s race, the Time Lords could build infintely large space craft that could fit into a small space (like the back of a props van on a TV show).

What’s the parallel with Information Quality? Well, those of us who have worked in Information Quality often forget that it is a discipline that is very much “bigger on the inside”. When people look at Information Quality from the outside, they might be forgiven for thinking that it has the general dimensions of a Blue Box (so to speak) and it is only when they venture inside that they realise there’s more to it than meets the eye. If your perception of IQM is that it is Data Profiling and some Cleansing, it can be quite a shock when you uncover the Change Management challenges, the human psychology issues, and the legal and regulatory issues that can affect Information Quality strategies.

Often we hard-core practitioners take it for granted that its is bigger on the inside, because we’re on the inside looking out.

People First, Technology Second

Quite apart from the long running love affair The Doctor has had with the Human Race, every adventure winds up with The Doctor being outrageously brilliant as a Time Lord, but more importantly inspiring and encouraging brilliance in his Companions and others around him. Whether it is calling in favours from old enemies (in return for some jelly babies perhaps) or rallying demoralised troops in the face of battle or unnatural enemies, The Doctor puts people first, often appearing willing to sacrifice himself to protect others.

Technology is applied in innovative and outlandish ways to meet the objective of protecting people. Even The Doctor’s trusted sonic screwdriver is not used as a tool in its own right but as a means of enabling things to happen and for information to be gathered to support decision making.

From an information quality management point of view it is important that we remember this lesson – the technology should not dictate the solution and, ultimately, it is people who are the brilliant and innovative sources of solutions to problems. A Data Profiler will tell you that the data looks broken. A human being will figure out the best solution (new business rule, new tools etc).

In short, to paraphrase The Doctor: “People are FANTASTIC!!”

Conclusion

I’m very much of the view that we can learn a lot from arts and literature about ourselves and who we can aim to be in how we approach things. Science fiction TV programmes are no different to the works of Shakespeare in this regard. Perhaps we can achieve more sustainable successes in our Information Quality travels by learning some lessons from The Doctor:

1. Everybody likes Jelly babies – (what is your equivalent?)
2. Not everyone can see that this is actually Bigger on the Inside… and when they step into the world of Information Quality it can be a bit of a shock to the system.
3. Technology doesn’t fix things. People fix things, occasionally using technology to get there. Remember that people are FANTASTIC!!

Here’s a link to the Word Cloud for this blog. I think the theme of my personal blogging is clear from this image…

Not a great post to start 2011, but there is more to come (oh yes…)

After more than a decade of falling points and expanding career options, all signs were that getting into a reasonably fulfilling college course would be just a matter of filling in the forms. But the great recession has put paid to that. Certain courses are no longer attractive at all, such as those leading towards a career in property or construction. The inevitable swing towards the sciences or any course that might feed into Brian Cowen’s beloved “smart economy” will increase competition for places. This year more people will sit the Leaving Cert than ever before. And now there’s talk of a wave of the newly unemployed going back to college.

Oh. To put that another way:

Over reliance on the benign nature of an economic model in which effectively turning up and having a pulse assured you of a foot on the entry level (at least) rungs of an asset acquisition ladder has resulted in a shock adjustment when the dynamics of that economic model change due to external factors and internal market forces.

To me, this sounds a lot like what happened in the property bubble and crash in Ireland, when lots of people chased moderate amounts of property with apparently bottomless pots of mortgage money available from banks, resulting in prices rocketing. A lot of people over stretched themselves financially to buy a property and then found themselves in a state of shock when the arse dropped out of prices and they were left paying a gallon sized mortgage on a half-pint asset value. Which is interesting, given that she is the Property Editor of the Irish Times.

The points system is a very crude mechanism for managing supply and demand in the Irish 3rd level education system. The purpose it serves is simply to set a price on a particular path of learning based on complex factors such as:

• Supply
• Demand

Other factors which historically influenced the price included the actual price of going to University. When I started in UCD back in 1994, I had to pay a few thousand pounds in fees as well as administration charges. In the late 199os the then Labour government removed fees in an effort to open up access to education. It was a flawed idea as financial ability is not the driver or motivator to going to college in areas historically affected by high unemployment. Not actually having any role models or examples of success in education and a variety of other factors are as powerful (if not more powerful) inhibitors towards someone from a poorer socio-economic area going to college (particularly where grants and scholarships might otherwise be available for the financial aspects).

So, in the absence of fees we are left with just supply and demand.

In the absence of fees, universities are struggling to provide services and have had to cut back on course numbers and on numbers of courses to manage costs. Many University heads have argued for the reintroduction of some form of fee so that they can maintain their ability to keep the lights on and the blackboards primed for action. Ultimately, this has affected the available supply of places on courses.

Ms. Mulcahy is correct to point out that the arrival of 12000 or so mature students (23 years or over, not an army of the middle aged ) into the equation has increased demand for places. But she starts to diverge from reality a little when she begins to argue that they shouldn’t be allowed to go back to college, particularly when she implies explicitly states that they are “leaving the job search” to spend time “ogling young ones”.

This phrases are pejorative and prejudiced in the extreme. It is equally as likely that, having spent a number of years working and paying taxes and developing practical skills and experience, these mature students have identified that to achieve career progression in their field they need to have some additional qualifications on their resume.  Perhaps they had finished college with an Arts degree back in the 1990s but have found that after spending 10 years working in a particular industry they want to study in that field instead? In that case they won’t qualify for free fees or maintenance grants and will be paying their way to “learn something new”.  Or perhaps (like some relatives of mine) simply decided that while they had the points to get into a good course in college back in the early 2000′s, they were much happier making money in real estate or telecommunications or any other ‘boom’ industry.

My personal experience of having mature students in my class at undergrad level in the 199os and when I was teaching at postgrad level is that they tend to be more motivated, less inclined to focus on how they will be graded and more inclined to focus on whether they actually know their stuff, and more willing to engage in discussion about topics for the benefit of the entire class.  Perhaps the fact that they have actually had to either give up work or take on a big financial commitment to come to college means that they actually don’t mind working hard. And this was not a “grey workforce”. Remember that a mature student is anyone over 23.

Ultimately, what it meant for me as an undergrad was that I had to pull my socks up as these motivated people were my competition for grades. For the Leaving Cert class of 2010 it means that that competition for grades has started a few months earlier than it would have, because Supply and Demand and market forces has meant that the price of going to college is going up.

Because 3rd level education is not a right or an entitlement. It is an opportunity, an investment, a prize for hard work and ability. Free fees has masked this because there is no pain point before you get to college. Other than the points race.

If the offspring who inspired Ms Mulcahy’s rant  cannot motivate themselves to work for their Leaving Cert and not have to be given grinds and cramming classes, then perhaps they are not yet ready for the self-directed grown up world of 3rd level learning. My personal experience of  ’hot-housed’ students in 3rd level who lack intrinsic motivation to learn and work has been that they often wind up struggling once the stabilizers and training wheels of grinds are no longer available to them.

But I’m sure that most of the 12000 mature students who are coming in from the cold are going to be motivated and ready for self-directed learning. I’m also sure they are more than willing to take responsibility for their own learning.

Other than that, perhaps Ms Mulcahy will start arguing in favour of the development of new funding mechanisms for 3rd level institutions that will enable them to scale their available supply of places to meet demand in future, but will also allow them to avoid carrying inefficient overhangs of resources which have no work to do (e.g lecturers with no courses to teach).  Of course, that might mean her and her friend having to actually pay a bit more for junior’s University education. But then… that’s economics for you.

Dear Leaving Cert Class of 2010: 3rd level education is not a right. It is a privilege. You need to work for it. If you don’t, someone else will and it will not be Mammy’s fault, or the Government’s fault, or the CAO’s fault. 2010 is when you need to learn that you are responsible for your future. Just like all the mature students applying for the CAO are taking responsibility for theirs.

A new addition to the family and some related complications meant I had some alternate priorities during December. However, I’m making it a New Year’s Resolution to write at least 2 posts of value per month in 2010. Hopefully I will be able to keep up that writing cadence. I may do shorter sound-bite posts as well during each month, but I thought 2 a month was a good target. I’d have gone for 3 a month but I am hoping to be busy enough that I won’t have time for that level of writing.

I’m starting today with a post based on some stuff in the media and a tutorial that I’m developing… there seems to have been a synchronicity of events which is serendipitous.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That’s leadership.

Obsessive Blogger Award

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’m not sure if it is the sunny weather here in Wexford but I was inspired this morning to spring clean the blog and put a new face on it. Please let me know what you think of the new look (thanks to the team at Jestro.com for the nice headstart on this theme).

I’ve tidied up the categories a bit and will be writing more regularly from here on out primarily on information quality topics and how they impact people.

He got the flyer below in to work. Commenters over at the ‘Otter have found upwards of 12 errors. So, for the next few days I’ll be running “The 12 Days of Blogger Christmas”. What I’d like commenters to do here is to suggest the festive (and appropriate) gift that would be sent to Christmastreesdirect.eu in this season of giving.

So, I’ll start the ball rolling….

“On the First day of Christmas, the Bloggers gave to me….

A brand new spell checking dictionary”….

Well, I was made a Fellow of the Irish Computer Society this evening. ’twas me and this guy. Apparently at one point in his career his OFFICIAL job title in the US government was “Expert”.

Not “Expertise Application Direction and Realisation Manager”. Just “Expert”.

Not bad for a youngfella from Limerick (him, not me).

So, following from my last post (and btw the saga continues off-blog in a reality far far away), I’ve been looking at my other options for getting zippy fast communications that might allow me to work more productively from home for my day job (and, heaven forfend, perhaps form the basis of a revenue creation and job creation buzz here in fair Wexford. After all I can’t commute the monster commute every week for the rest of my life).

I’ve signed up to 3′s service which proudly announced on their coverage map that they had service in my area… and zip-tasticly not slow it would be as well. Eh… it’s not. It’s painfully slow. Think of how it would feel to have your skin whipped from your bones by a slug who’d just smoked an entire University campus worth of cannabis and was more concerned with what flavour mars bar he’d like to eat and you get an idea of how slow the service is. If that doesn’t work, here’s a picture of a GOOD result…

However, 3′s customer service are quite good, helpful, polite, and professional, with all my details to their finger tips. They have eventually told me there is an issue in Wexford town and its environs that has been known about for some time in 3′s engineering section who are working on it with no ETA for a solution. So why is the coverage map showing lots’ of deep blue around Wexford? Is it perhaps some form of marketing ploy that might possible be easily confused with lying (which it simply isn’t.. that would be wrong).

I’m giving it a week. Then I return it and get my money back if it isn’t working above 1MB at least. Anything less isn’t broadband speed.

I am depressed reading the Government’s Broadband strategy. It’s a joke. They don’t have one. They are clutching at straws. There is a vast amount of ‘dark fibre’ network in the country. CIE has some, and wouldn’t it be a nice way to keep rail travel costs down if they could lease that dark fibre to companies who might help service the needs of teleworkers (who might then use the train to travel to meetings when they had to).

Counting people who have access to broadband in work in their stats for people who have access to broadband is a bit of a cop-out. Are the DCENR seriously proposing that it is OK for people to use company-provided broadband services (which are usually accessed via controlled and firewalled office networks) to do personal business?

Boss: McMurphy… where’s my audit report?
McMurphy: I don’t have it done yet boss, I was just uploading photos of my kids to facebook, myspace, bebo, flickr while chatting on GChat with Mike from accounts who left to go to Australia
Boss: McMurphy… you’re fired (for a documented breach of the company’s acceptable internet use policies).

My needs are simple… a reliable broadband connection, with a download speed faster than running and an upload speed faster than walking (2MB down, 1 – 2 MB up would do, but I’d like more). I’d like the service to be not prone to sudden and inexplicable outages. I’d like my wife to be able to rely on it so she can video chat with me when I’m travelling for work… usually to Dublin where I’ve broadband a-plenty. I’d like to be able to use VPN tunnelling to access my work servers securely, rather than poxy bloody PSTN dial-up that takes forever to open the tools I use to do my job. I’d like to be able to use that broadband connection to give me choices about my work life balance, future career path, lifestyle etc.

I’d like to live in the 21st Century, not the 1980s. I’d like to feel that my ability to work with the interweb and adopt a lifestyle that let me blend my work and homelife through telework tools had actually moved on since I first got on-line in 1993 and started reading about the telework studies that they did in Puget Sound in the US and thought “that’s what I’d like to do” (at the time I was trying to run a business out of my bedroom… shortest commute I’ve ever had).

Right now it doesn’t feel that way. Right now I am painfully personally aware of the ‘digital divide’. This is more than just a pursuit of a Giffen Good (in economic terms). This is a quest for an enabling technology, a commodity not a luxury. Will “access to broadband” join “near a road”, “close to a river” etc. as critieria for discussion in junior cert geography or business studies when the students are asked to site a factory or school or government department in an exam question?

This ‘enabling technology’ is on a par with rural electrification in the 1940s (a project which didn’t end until the 1970s) , which significantly changed the nature and outlook of life in rural Ireland. One commentator describes the situation pre-rural electrification thus:

At that time, few towns in Ireland, outside of the major cities, had a local electricity supply. For example, Kilkenny had no electricity supply while others like Carlow had a local supply

Sounds very like our Broadband situation.

So, in the absence of a Broadband equivalent of Rural Electrification (which the Government’s broadband strategy definitely isn’t and which the National Broadband Scheme fails to be), or a reliable local provider of reliable local broadband (“all the bits and bytes are made local boss”) I’m pondering training pigeons to deliver messages for me through the medium of interpretive dance.

Failing that, a note nailed to their ankles will have to do.