If you’re reading this, there’s a strong chance your organisation is on the road to data quality management maturity. One of the challenges you’ll obviously face is how to deal with all the defects discovered. Many data quality problems can be "cleansed" instantly using appropriate technology, but for a lot
Although its simplest definition is “data about data,” metadata can be better thought of as a label that provides a definition, description or context for data. Common examples include relational table definitions and flat file layouts. More detailed examples include conceptual and logical data models. Among its other possible uses,
I was speaking to one of our UK members last week who is responsible for data quality in a large public sector organisation. When we got talking about the most useful techniques she has drawn on to mature data quality in her organisation, I got one of the most common
In a previous post, I urged you to prevent the spread of the data zombie virus. However, not all viruses are bad. In fact, there are even viral outbreaks that can be good for your organization. One of my favorite books is Unleashing the Ideavirus, where author Seth Godin explains
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
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
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
I consume so much coffee on a daily basis that I consider it to be one of my food groups. This might not be as unhealthy as it sounds since coffee beans are actually the seeds of coffee cherries, which means coffee is essentially fruit juice – and drinking a
The third part of my data governance primer series addresses data quality analysis. Don’t even start a data quality analysis until you have completed the first two steps of your root cause analysis: investigate and prioritize any potential causative factors, then start your metadata assessment. Otherwise, you may be misled
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
