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'Where did it all go wrong?' - 15 June 2007 - Hosted by Deloitte, the Strand, London   

The 'Flaming' June rainfall slightly dampened the attendance to this interesting day, with flooding preventing some delegates from travelling to London. However, the subject of the day and 7 excellent presentations helped to brighten up the day and made another successful DAMA UK event.............a full report and the presentations can be found below.

For this seminar DAMA UK has continued its annual collaboration with the BCS a collaboration that adds values to both organisations and benefits them both greatly. The event was jointly chaired by Arthur Haynes chair of the BCS DMSG and me as Chair of DAMA UK. Both organisations are keen to express their thanks to Deloitte for hosting the event at their splendid facilities at The Strand in London. On behalf of DAMA UK I would also like to express my personal thanks to the ongoing support form our annual sponsors Trillium Software and ASG. We greatly value this support without which we would be unable to achieve many of the activities that mark us out as a forward looking and progressive organisation focused on our members’ needs.

The structure of this seminar was a departure from the normal DAMA seminar. Instead of the more usual three or four speakers we were honoured to have seven prestigious, experienced and knowledgeable Data Management experts. They will forgive me if I describe them as old hands, battle scarred and toughened up by careers at the Data Management coal face. Been there, done it and worn out the t-shirts!

The day was kicked off by Ed Wrazen of Trillium Software who shared his experiences of what can go wrong across a variety of industry sectors, from car hire, travel agents and the armed forces, a salutary lesson it must be said. Ed went on to explain the value and necessity of Data Profiling to prevent such problems occurring.

Ed was followed by Dr Mikhaila Burgess from the University of Cardiff who spoke about the meaning of Data Quality, how is it defined and how the definitions change depending whether you are a producer, custodian or user of the data, there was much lively debate after this presentation which continued over the coffee and lunch breaks. It certainly made a number of the audience think differently.

Next up was Chris Bradley of IPL who spoke with some passion of the need to make the most of Data Models and why so many organisations do not seem to acknowledge the value of them or have any interest in building or indeed using them to improve their business. Ed, Mikhaila and Chris then made up a panel which fielded questions from the floor prior to lunch.

After lunch the afternoon session was kicked of by Lorna Brown a Director of ModelPKS Consultancy Services Ltd who spoke eloquently and without slides on the human impact of poor data management systems and processes. This was yet another facet of data management that many of the audience had not considered before, the enlightenment on many faces was clear for all to see.

Lorna was followed by Ron Nicholls of BT with the intriguingly titled “Wrong first time”. For the first time that I can remember DAMA went multi media and Ron told us all about problems with address data and how properties can actually appear to move from North to South London, well if you get the address and postcode wrong they can. A thoroughly entertaining session delivered in Ron’s inimitable style amusing, light hearted but with a deadly business message.

Steve Tuck CTO of Datanomic enlightened us with some personal experiences of the problems that poor Data Management can cause. Firstly with his house, this is on the corner of two roads, having its electricity supply cut off. The electricity company had the wrong road as his address and even though Steve had paid of course his bill but for his ‘other’ house on the other road! Then we had the trials and tribulations accompanied by much levity, of Steve’s attempts to get a replacement oven door for his Aga. If anyone needs a spare oven door for their Aga speak to Steve who apparently has a number of spares – Steve can give you chapter and verse!

Last by not least Tom Scampion of our hosts for the day Deloitte gave us an overview of the Deloitte view on Data Quality and how they as an organisation have developed an approach and a practice of specialists to help their clients avoid some of the all too common consequences of not managing your data properly.

All in all a thoroughly enjoyable, thought provoking and interesting day. The venue was perfect, the hospitality superb and the debate and discussion lively and invigorating. Thanks again to Tom Scampion and to Deloitte for hosting us and the BCS and for making the day such a success.

'Data Quality - 'Where did it all go wrong?' - Ed Wrazen, Trillium Software Ltd

'Data Quality - What is it and, do we all agree?' - Dr Mikhaila Burgess, Cardiff University

'Where did it all go wrong?' - Chris Bradley, IPL Ltd