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.Â
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.Â
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).
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.comÂ
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).Â
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).Â
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!