The physical and social costs of untreated mental illness are significant and have been discussed in detail in previous posts. Now let’s talk about the immense financial costs, then I’ll wrap up the series with a conclusion. The financial costs cover a broad cross-section of society, including government services and
.@philsimon on the stickiness of data
The bigness of your data is likely not its most important characteristic. In fact, it probably doesn’t even rank among the Top 3 most important data issues you have to deal with. Data quality, the integration of data silos, and handling and extracting value from unstructured data are still the most
Hadoop recently turned eight years old, but it was only 3-4 years ago that Hadoop really started gaining traction. It had many of us “older” BI/DW folks scratching our heads wondering what Hadoop was up to and if our tried-and-true enterprise data warehouse (EDW) ecosystems were in jeopardy. You didn't
A few weeks back I noted that one of the objectives on an inventory process for reference data was data harmonization, which meant determining when two reference sets refer to the same conceptual domain and harmonizing the contents into a conformed standard domain. Conceptually it sounds relatively straightforward, but as
How many projects have you worked on that forgot to test size, volume, and conduct load balancing in a newly converted environment? I have worked on a few of those types of projects. I know in a data warehousing effort, we always check any servers and databases, based on load,
What kind of security do we need for this conversion? In fact, where are the security people? Including security personnel upfront in any conversion project can sure save some time and heartache later. It is important to include security for the following: Source system access – You must be able
David Loshin defines reference data and sets up a working definition for his next set of posts.
The volume is being turned up on the Control Tower approach to running a business; I have recently been introduced to logistics control towers, supply chain control towers and operations control towers just for starters. I’m sure there must be at least a half dozen more out there – pick
With the increasing emphasis on responsiveness, resiliency, flexibility and agility, I suppose it was only a matter of time before the “agile” concept caught up with strategy itself. While I may have hinted at this idea four years ago in two of my earliest posts for the Value Alley, “Strategy
A few years ago, I was presenting a morning course on master data management in which I shared some thoughts about some of the barriers to success in transitioning the use of a developed master data management index and repository into production systems. During the coffee break, an attendee mentioned
Lately, there's been lots of buzz around the logical data warehouse (LDW). In fact, Gartner is hearing LDW mentions as part of data warehouse (DW) inquiries almost 20% of the time and considers it a "megatrend." The definition usually includes some use of data virtualization or data federation capabilities to complement
“The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.” ~ Warren G. Bennis The promise of digital manufacturing is drawing closer to
In the era of big data, Kenneth Cukier and Viktor Mayer-Schonberger noted in their book Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think, “we are in the midst of a great infrastructure project that in some ways rivals those of the past, from the Roman aqueducts
Imagine a business offering a multitude of products and services that seemingly have little relationship to one another, and all are supported by different data systems. This is the plight of local governments. The products and services produced and managed by local governments range from utilities, solid waste and recycling to parks
Dateline: October 4, 2012 – Facebook reaches one billion users! One billion people connected on a single platform; one-seventh of the world’s population. If you assume 40,000 BCE as the start of modern humans, it took the planet 41,804 years to reach a population level of one billion; it took
… and any fool will mind it”. ~ Henry David Thoreau. The EPA was in my neighborhood several weeks ago testing well water - never a good sign. It was determined that the subdivision just north and upstream of us had once been the site of a farm contaminated by
As much as I enjoy dramatic reinterpretations, for this blog post I’m just going to talk to you about the complex challenges municipal organizations face in setting spending priorities. The complexity stems from competing aspects of the various projects vying for funding. Some of these factors are related to the
This is a dramatic interpretation of an actual conversation I recently had with the CIO of one of North Carolina’s leading cities. We discussed his experience using data quality, data integration, business intelligence and analytics in the daily operation of the city. I may have taken some...well, a lot of
Nancy Rausch, from SAS R&D, is driving a short demonstration of how to access Hadoop via SAS Data Integration Studio. Take a look. You're probably going to want to take a look at this paper, too: What's new in SAS Data Management?
The single most costly employee benefit for any organization is health insurance, and the price is going up. From 2003-2009, the costs per hour worked for employee health insurance increased from $1.03 to $2.00. These costs continue to increase from 5%-7% per year. The reality is that employee health insurance costs will continue
For the past year, I’ve had the pleasure of serving on the communications team of the National Collaborative for Bio-Preparedness (NCB-P), of which SAS is a partner and the analytics provider. That experience was heavy on my mind as I recently watched the film Contagion. I may drop some minor
At our latest Power Series event in Manhattan, one of the teams took a futuristic approach to addressing data challenges. They described the need for a “compliance box” that front ends the data management process that integrates, cleanses and ensure data integrity across a number of different, typically silo’d data
Over my 32 year career in local government as a city and county manager I was faced with many difficult decisions during budget deliberations. Setting tax and utility rates, adding head count, determining compensation and benefits, calculating the appropriate mix of debt and cash for funding capital projects…these were all
The downturn in the economy beginning in 2008 and continuing even to now has put tremendous pressure on local governments to do “less with less”. In the past when economic downturns caused service level cut backs the cry was to do “more with less”. The idea was to identify ways
SAS is the underwriter of a MeriTalk study released today that focuses on “The Federal Efficiency Opportunity”. The study uncovered meaningful insights into how federal managers and professionals are trying to meet their goals while facing enormous budget cuts. The study was done after President Obama’s Deficit Commission suggested in
~Contributed by Varsha Chawla, SAS~ What could a business analyst possibly like better than understanding the data in a database? Try understanding the metadata (data about data) and knowing how to access this in an ORACLE database. According to Carole Jesse, Senior SAS Analyst at Prime Therapeutics, databases have their
I have recently had the great opportunity to be a part of a very special project called the North Carolina Bio-Preparedness Collaborative (NCB-Prepared) It is a public-private partnership that includes the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), North Carolina State University, and SAS, with support from the US
For all our SAS Global Forum connoisseurs, welcome to this series - Snapshot of the Best Papers of 2010. Despite running for more than three decades, there’s always something new and exciting cooking at SAS Global Forum. Through this series, I will be sharing some of those vibrant flavors from
The recent mail bomb attempt on US-bound cargo and commercial airliners is another reminder of the terrorist threat the United States continues to face. While there may be a lull in the news cycles from time to time, the threat is there every day. A key component in detecting and
