| Back to Educational Grid |
Information from Your Data? Better Check the Data Quality!
Analyzing our automated data in Business Intelligence Tools is totally dependent upon the quality of that data. Sounds obvious? Just how bad government data can be is simply not appreciated. The truth is most of our data is MUCH WORSE THAN WE THOUGHT! All information analysis is inextricably yoked to data quality. Quality is the major obstacle at the front end-not user requirements. You must let the data tell you what uses it can be put to. After a BI Tool is built, it is the IT analysts that become the de facto business analysts because they know the data> '> s limitations best. The documentation of data errors during analysis yield an important by-product--the users can tighten up on what in the future gets initially captured. Why don't we know how bad our data is? What makes it surface finally? Are the error rates the same for all systems-- regulatory, administrative, technical, financial? What is THE crucial step we must control to have any hope of ultimate quality? There's hope, once the problem is recognized. |
