We Like Bad Data
Ian Bailey
I found myself discussing data quality the other day. It’s not my area of expertise, but that’s never stopped me before, so here goes.
Have you ever wondered what people really mean when they talk about poor data quality ? A lot of what constitutes today’s data detritus would seem to be typos – people make mistakes when keying-in data. Another culprit is inconsistent reference data; either systems use different codes and errors occur when they are synchronised, or once more the hapless user has been a bit lax with the keyboard.
We all know it’s easy to blame the users. But, at least on first appraisal, in the case of data quality it really does seem to be their fault – for once, Igor from the IT dungeon seems to have got the ear of the management. In the case of typos, there’s very little we can do about it, and people can’t be blamed for hitting the wrong keys now and again. We could all do to improve our typing skills, but perhaps if IT had designed the system so that it checked against master/reference data in the first place, a significant number of problems could be avoided.
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