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Fundamentals of Data Quality Assessment

When:             Thursday July 24th, 2008

Time:               8:45 check-in
                         9:00 - 12:00 meeting

Where:            Holiday Inn Madison at The American Center
                         5109 West Terrace Drive
                         Madison, WI 53718
                         (608) 249-4220

Speaker:         Michael Scofield

Description:         

After a survey of the nature of information and data, we will provide a rigorous dissecting of the concepts of data quality, including data presence, scope, validity, reasonableness, accuracy, precision, and consistency. We will define each of these with numerous examples, and explain how they are different.

Then we will show some practical techniques for assessing the quality of existing data assets in production databases. The data assets of the organization range far beyond the major business databases, and include flows from external sources, and non-production assets.

The examination and profiling of data assets need not require an expensive vendor-supplied DQ tool. The effort can be launched immediately with the query or reporting tools already in-house. What is key is an astute, cynical data analyst who can imagine all the ways the data can go wrong, and tests for them. We will show numerous examples of bad data (gasp!) in production databases (concealing the names of the guilty companies).

Finally, we will explore the politics of data quality, and how data quality improvement is really a distributed function, accomplished through providing the proper tools and understanding to the diverse knowledge workers around an organization.

This material has been presented about 20 times to various DAMA chapters, Oracle User Groups, IBM User Groups, and chapters of the Quality Assurance Assn.