As I pen these words, the Obama administration is in the midst of an absolute debacle over the botched launch of Healthcare.gov. Regardless of what you think of Obamacare, it's hard to ignore what has become one of the most visible IT project failures of recent memory. Details are still coming
Loraine Lawson recently used the Eight-Fold Path of Buddhism, in which practitioners are encouraged to pursue right views, intentions, speech, actions, livelihood, efforts, mindfulness and concentration, as inspiration for her blog post The Five-Fold Path for Ensuring Data = Information. The post offered five recommendations for ensuring that data is transformed into
Last time we explored consumption and usability as an alternative approach to data governance. In that framework, data stewards can measure the quality of the data and alert users about potential risks of using the results, but are prevented from changing the data. In this post we can look at
Within data quality circles there is often contentious debate surrounding the use of data quality software. Some practitioners believe that data quality software is a cost centre for the organisation that they can easily do without. They also believe that data quality software makes the organisation focus on repetitive, reactionary
Data stewardship is one of the prime positions in any data management organization. The business and technical stewards are the conduit between the organizing functions in the management structure (which determine policies and processes for data management) and the data management functions that perform the actual work, such as data
Since tomorrow is How-long-has-it-been-since-you-used-this-data-ween, it’s time to review your organization’s preparedness for preventing the zombie data-pocalypse. (Please Note: This should not be confused with your organization’s preparedness for preventing the zombie apocalypse, for which check out the resources provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by ever-so-carefully clicking on
One of the hottest job descriptions in the data management field in the last couple of years is the position of “data scientist.” The rise of this job description matches the rise of the concept of big data – data sources that are very large in volume, change frequently, and
Earlier, I wrote about the Hadoop-centric view of big data that was evident in some recent research conducted by TDWI. If you haven't read the report yet, make sure you download "Managing Big Data," which gives a fantastic overview of "big data management" and how it's impacting organizations. Like any good piece
As this blog is largely about data, you can rest assured this post will not be about the recent federal budget standoff in the US. Instead, I wanted to outline a growing issue that relates to the false promises that many data governance initiatives deliver. One of the big challenges that
Every week, it seems, I overhear someone at my gym talking about another fad diet. Cabbage-this or berry-that is supposed to magically make the pounds disappear. Perhaps there are legitimate success stories with these diets. Still, it doesn't take a nutritionist or personal trainer to realize that, for the most part, losing
