Another failing government IT project made the headlines earlier this month, appearing in the mainstream (The Telegraph) and IT (Computing) press, but this one caught my eye for some rather personal reasons. The project in question is the migration of patient records at the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre in Oxford – and the headline in The Telegraph, Hospital computer system may ‘lose’ patients, particularly worried me – you see I’m an outpatient at the centre.

Greetings from the CDI-MDM Summit in San Francisco. I’m scheduled to fly back to the UK on Sunday, but an e-mail I received from Virgin Atlantic last night has got me worried – apparently they think I’m flying to Miami.

Business Intelligence systems have, for the most part, been dreary failures. But not in the restaurant industry. There, the payoffs have been significant. So what have you been doing wrong? And what are they doing right?

The expression Garbage In, Garbage Out or GIGO is older than I am! It dates back to the days of punched cards (which I just missed when I started my IT career in 1984) and first appeared in the OED in 1964; nonetheless it’s as true today as it was then.

Many people (including acknowledged data quality gurus) appear to have a very restricted view of what constitutes “dirty” data and what you can do to improve it. I was reading an article recently that expounded the case for cleaning-up dirty data, but never ventured beyond tried and tested examples of historical data and alternative versions of names.

Yet another UK Government IT project has been delayed due to data quality problems: Computing: Data quality problems halt latest police pilots of firearms database.

“Nothing in life is certain except death and taxes” – Benjamin Franklin

The truth of the second of these is undeniable, but you could be forgiven for doubting the first if you worked in the branch office of some banks. How would you react if, as a bank teller, your computer records showed that the customer standing in front of you supposedly died a year ago? “Um,… how are you feeling today Mr. Smith, you’re looking a little pale?”

The Global Data Synchronisation (GDS) Network is an Internet-based supply chain initiative that was founded by two international standards groups; UCC (Uniform Code Council) and EAN International. Industry heavyweights, including Tesco, Asda Wallmart, Proctor & Gamble, Unilever, Cadbury Trebor Bassett and Kraft, are among the retailers and suppliers calling for other industry players to sign up to the GDS Network.

That may seem a strange question to ask, but it’s one that I remember an IT Project Manager once boasting that their system could answer. What she meant was that their customer management system could support the data because “His Holiness The Pope” was included in the drop-down list of personal titles and they had a check box to flag customers who had a vicious canine.

When The Data Warehousing Institute asked in a survey “where does dirty data come from?” the main cause cited was sloppy data entry. But my experience is that it’s sometimes unfair to blame the users; let me give you an example.