Friday, October 2, 2009

September Festival del IDQ Bloggers


With the month of September come and gone, the changing colour of the leaves starting, hockey season starting and the wind getting colder by the day, we found another month filled with interesting posts about data quality. This month I am happy to say, I'm hosting September's "Festival del IDQ Bloggers".

An annual data quality blogging carnival held by the International Association for Information and Data Quality, an international not-for-profit association dedicated to the development of the data and information and data quality profession.


The following is a quick list, I'll say quick but it actually took an excruciating long time to compile, split coffee on my keyboard, hit my head on the light and I stubbed my toe in the process ;-)
On with the data quality blog round-up...
From the DoBlog (http://obriend.info/) the personal blog of Daragh O Brien, IAIDQ Director and Information Quality consultant and writer. Since 2006 Daragh has been writing about Information Quality related topics (amongst other things) on this blog and has even won an Obsessive Blogger award for his writing on Information Quality topics.

We find two posts of interest one about the Law and the other about Market Research.

Blog Post: http://obriend.info/2009/09/25/finding-red-herrings-or-missing-a-trick/

Market Research often falls foul of poor quality information about the target sample population. In this post Colin Boylan (a freelance Market Researcher) discusses some of the issues that can lead to you chasing Red Herrings or just Missing a Trick.

Colin Boylan is a freelance market researcher living and working in Ireland. He has worked with many of the leading market research firms in Ireland and the UK, with particular experience in Pharmaceutical studies (where good quality data is essential).

Also in the same blogging journal we have an interesting tale about the law looking at data quality...



Blog Post: http://obriend.info/2009/09/29/a-game-changer-ferguson-v-british-gas/

For about 4 years, Daragh has been hammering on about how poor quality information can and could get an organization sued. In January it happened, with a very clear and explicit ruling in the Court of Appeal for England and Wales that sets a very interesting legal precedent (binding in England and Wales and persuasive in all other Common Law jurisdictions such as Ireland, Canada, Australia, India, USA, Pakistan....). This post (based on an article Daragh wrote for the IAIDQ in April) looks at that case and the implications for Information Quality professionals.

Daragh O Brien is a Director of IAIDQ, a Fellow of the Irish Computer Society and, after escaping from indentured servitude in a leading Irish Telco after 12 years is in the process of establishing a specialist Information Quality Management and training practice. He is also writing a book on legal issues in Information Quality with Fergal Crehan, a prominent Irish barrister (lawyer).

No Blog Carnival is complete without a post from the Obsessed Jim Harris in this short but sweet post Jim talks about knowledge and the fact that we know what we know, and we don’t know the rest. Something to think about as you read Jim’s post.






Jim’s OCDQ blog is an independent blog offering a vendor neutral perspective on data quality. A place where he offers a diversity of viewpoints in a collaborative style environment. Jim himself is an independent consultant, speaker, writer and blogger with over 15 years of professional services and application development experience in data quality (DQ), data integration, data warehousing (DW), business intelligence (BI), customer data integration (CDI), and master data management (MDM). Jim has worked with Global 500 companies in finance, brokerage, banking, insurance, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, retail, telecommunications, and utilities.

Jumping across the pond and over to Sweden, where I’ll take a moment and say hi to the Ericsson’s, Brit, Mikael, Max, Guztav and Hanah, I hope all is well. Then a quick move to Denmark where, we have DQ blogger Henrik Liliendahl Sørenson. A man of many talents, who has worked over 20 years in applications, databases and data in general. Henrik has demonstrated his expertise in business directory matching and international aspects of data quality improvement and master data management.
Henrik’s blog, Liliendahl on Data Quality, is a collection of his personal opinions, experiences and observations around data quality. Accumulated over decades and I do mean decades of experience.

Henrik discusses the multi-use potentials of data quality...could it be...can data quality be used for increasing revenues, and for marketing...read on and find out.


The post has a follow up post sparked by the comments: http://liliendahl.wordpress.com/2009/09/27/process-of-consolidating-master-data/

Going across the globe and going to that lovely local known as Australia we have Vincent McBurney a manager with Deloitte Consulting in Australia and has 15 years as an application programmer, database programmer, ERP implementer and information management consultant. The blog is dedicated to a tool based approach to data integration with news and tips on IBM InfoSphere, Informatica, Oracle, Microsoft and any breaking data integration news.

This particular post is interesting because it talks about something we all like - fudge. But not this fudge, no way, this fudge is actually fudging moments and then having to apply some kludge techniques or go in and kludge the situation to fix it. Fudge, Kludge all around a great read.

Blog Post: http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/infosphere/the-data-quality-and-how-to-fudge-it-34289

From the Data Quality Pro…Dylan Jones provides us an excellent interview with Ken O’Connor who discuss the a means in creating a data issue assessment process, something everything DQ Team should have in place, and that’s why it’s here. Coming from the trenches this is something any data quality analyst can use over and over again.


DataQualityPro is an online community resource that is solely dedicated to the needs and development of data quality professionals everywhere. Dylan Jones, is the founder and editor of Data Quality Pro and Data Migration Pro, leading online knowledge centre and community sites for their respective professions.With a 15 year background in data quality and data migration Dylan now supports a global community of several thousand professionals who actively collaborate and contribute to help increase the collective knowledge in these fields.

Here’s an interesting read about data governance from Gwen Thomas. Gwen Thomas is Founder and President of The Data Governance Institute, which is the premier provider of in-depth, vendor-neutral information about, and assistance with, tools, techniques, models, and best practices for the governance/stewardship of data and information. This is Gwen’s personal blog from the Data Governance Institute.

This post is here because data quality is a big piece of data governance. Data governance provides guidance in defining quality. There is a symbiotic relationship between the two.
With this post we get a high level view of the net-centric governance and the potential issues of control one may have with it. It gets the wheels turning when you begin to think of the implications that may and could very well follow.

Blog Post: http://datagovernancematters.com/2009/09/14/net-centric-data-governance-not-for-sissies/


Finally…
After hearing about the actions of an old friend of mine working hard in a data quality team, I was surprised to learn she is still having to justify the existence of the data quality team. It’s always good to know about what you’re doing and the value you bring to the table, but this being the 3rd time within a year, I believe enough is enough…so here it is. Who am I, well I am this guy, business analyst by day, data quality analyst by night. My blog, Data Quality Edge, is really a place to voice my opinions and what I hope will provide a grassroots look at data quality, something really for the data quality analyst in the trench. Because they are the ones that get the job done.


Wishing you all the best in the cooler months ahead! Good reading.


Dan



4 comments:

  1. Thanks Daniel for including my blog in this post.

    I have a geographical correction which is, that despite I love Sweden and does go there many times every year since it’s part of my responsible area as Nordic Director in Omikron Data Quality, I am a citizen in Denmark.

    Anyway, thanks for this very well edited carnival entry in your excellent blog.

    All the best

    Henrik Liliendahl Sørensen

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hnerik I have corrected my mistake. Definitely a human error resulting in a quality issue.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi Dan,

    Many thanks for including my interview with Dylan Jones of DataQualityPro. I'm glad that you, as a Data Quality Professional working in the trenches, find the Data Issue Assessment Process useful.

    Rgds Ken

    ReplyDelete
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    homebased

    ReplyDelete