Copenhagen

Data Quality and Climate Politics

Henrik Gabs Liliendahl8 Comments

cop15_logo_imgIn 1 month and 1 day the United Nations Climate Change Conference commence in my hometown Copenhagen. Here the people of the Earth will decide if we want to save the planet now or we will wait a while and see what happens.

The Data Quality issue might seem of little importance compared to the climate issue. Nevertheless I have been thinking about some similarities between Data Governance/ Data Quality and climate politics.

It goes like this:

CEO buy-in

It’s often said that CEO’s don’t buy-in on data quality improvements because it’s a loser’s game. In climate politics the CEO’s are the heads of states. It’s still a question how many heads of state who will attend the Copenhagen conference. There is a great deal of attention around whether United States president Barack Obama will attend. His last visit to Copenhagen in early October didn’t turn out as a success as his recommendation for Chicago as Olympic host city was fruitless. I guess he will only come again if success is very likely.

Personal agendas  

On the other hand British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has urged all world leaders to come to Copenhagen. While I think this is great for the conference being a success I also have a personal reason to think, that it’s a very bad idea. Having all the world heads of states driving around in the Copenhagen streets surrounded by a horde of police bikes will make traffic jams interfering with my daily work and more seriously my Christmas shopping.

It’s no secret that much of the climate problem is caused by us as individuals not being more careful about our energy consumption in daily routines. Data Quality is all the same about individuals not thinking ahead but focusing on having daily work done as quickly and comfortable as possible.

The business perspective

My fellow countryman Bjørn Lomborg is a prominent proponent of the view of focusing more on battling starvation, diseases and other evils because the resources will be spent more effective here than the marginal effects the same resources will have on fighting changing climate.

Data Quality improvement is often omitted from Business Process Reengineering when the scope of these initiatives is undergoing prioritizing focusing on worthy measurable short term wins.

Final words

My hope for my planet – and my profession – is that we are able to look ahead and do what is best for the future while we take personal responsibility and care in our daily work and life.

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Man versus Computer. Special Edition.

Henrik Gabs Liliendahl5 Comments

trafficFollowing up on my previous post on Man versus Computer I am actually most workday mornings reminded about how man sucks.

Most workday mornings I leave home in my car heading into the following traffic:

  • A 4 lane motorway rolling in from southern Copenhagen, rest of Denmark, Germany and ultimately rest of Eurasia.
  • A 5th lane coming in from a local area.

These 5 lanes then split into:

  • 2 lanes heading for the Danish answer to Silicon Valley (called Ballerup)
  • 3 lanes leading to downtown Copenhagen or the main fair (called Bella Center), airport, Sweden and rest of Scandinavia.

Of course you will expect some mingling here. What happens every morning is rather a complete stop in traffic and the cause is not the merge and splitting but humans being drivers as:

  • Experienced local selfish drivers staying in the fastest lane until they suddenly want to switch lane according to their ongoing route.
  • Unexperienced (in this area) foreign drivers coming up from crowded central Europe in search for tranquility deep into the Swedish forests having no clue about where to position in this intersection. The same goes for Swedes returning for the opposite reason.
  • Everyone else having fun rejecting the switching from the selfish types and the foreign ones who should know better than passing in rush hours.

Some solutions to this problem might be:

  • Change Management learning people better driving habits.
  • Onboard computer in every car taking care of lane positioning. Should go smooth splitting 5 lanes into 2 + 3 lanes.

Now I am waiting for which solution that will be implemented first.

The Statue of Liberty versus The Little Mermaid

Henrik Gabs Liliendahl2 Comments

Statue_of_Liberty_NYThe Statue of Liberty in New York harbor is 46 metres (151 ft) high – 93 metres (305 ft) with foundation and pedestal.

The Little Mermaid sits on a rock in the Copenhagen harbour. The relatively small size of the statue typically surprises tourists visiting for the first time. The Little Mermaid statue is only 1.25 metres (4 ft) high.

Little_Mermaid_CopenhagenActually most things in Denmark are smaller than in the US – also the size of companies. Of course there are Maersk, Carlsberg and Lego, but most of companies from there are SMB’s (Small and Medium sized Business’s) in a global sense.

As Graham Rhind points out in his blog http://grcdi.blogspot.com/2009/05/what-about-rest-of-data.html most literature about data quality is fixed completely on data held in large corporate entities. Statistically the relative number of SMB’s are probably close to the same – but having only a few large companies somehow shifts the focus more to the SMB’s in my country (and our Nordic neighbours).

This is why I have actually worked with data quality improvement both at SMB’s and at large companies.

Most significant differences as I have seen is probably not surprising on the data governance part, where you have to use much more agile (guerrilla) approaches with the SMB’s.

The technology part is pretty much the same – but ROI is king as ever. With SMB’s results must show up almost immediately, there is no room for months of tuning. Software must be user friendly, there is no room for excessive consultancy.

I can recommend all data quality professionals to do a SMB implementation in order to sharpen your skills and tools.

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