Friday, June 22, 2007

The limits of Freedom: Manage your Data

The points made about supporting maximum freedom for the users are mostly true for Document Management, but when we talk data than we should be careful about allowing too much freedom. Data is by definition a more structured type of information than a document and structure means the requirement for control.

In a well functioning data management environment we have data sets that are used in more than one environment and therefore it is of paramount importance that this master reference data is of the best possible quality and adheres to clear and common definitions. Even better - it would be great to have a number of tags with every data item, telling what it is and telling you what has happened to it.

This is actually in line with some of the Web2.0 thinking. For document management the web2.0 looks like reducing the controls, but for data management this is not true - since this is about adding more context. And this is where the ideas of the semantic web come into play. This idea of the semantic web is about putting information into context so the meaning of information (the semantics) can be understood by machines (search engines, integration engines, etc.). Integration should be a problem that you solve once and by establishing open standards this should be achievable.

Please note - I am not advocating to add a lot of overhead to managing data, but merely a number of measures that should be taken into consideration for every data item that is shared across systems. The basics are as follows:

  • First of all: Know what is should be shared - don't put measures in place on items that are unique to one system (unless that data is critical)
  • Ensure integration of meta data with data - using standard XML schemas is very good approach
  • Put in place some quality indicators - automated measures checking completeness and consistency of the data - this can be part of the meta data
  • Also add other tags like time stamps and userids of people who have done something with the data (audit trail)

A controlled data management environment is a must for making business processes work across the company and across systems. The more you ensure the data adheres to transportable standards and is available with contextual meta data, the more you can integrate. At the end of the day data is only part of the information infrastructure. The real value is in what you do with it.

It also can help reducing the controls on document management. If documents can be automatically tagged via extracting words listed in master reference data, than that reduces the overhead in document management.

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