The Elusive One Version of the Truth

There's a good editorial on the 7 November issue of InformationWeek entitled, The Elusive One Version of the Truth.

I like the article because it addresses the issues we face in obtaining accuracy from our information sources. It's particularly difficult when many use alternatives -- other systems, their own spreadsheets -- to provide input on a consolidated report for example. The author, Chris Murphy, quotes one of my favourite sources, Jeanne Ross from MIT's Sloan School's Center for Information Systems Research -- "Just declare it", she says.

To quote: "Pick one source, and declare that this is now the one version executives and employees will use to make decisions. Getting to one version of the truth doesn't have anything to do with accuracy, it has everything to do with declaring it... Once you tell everyone 'This is our single source, they work pretty hard to make it more accurate."

Years ago, working for a unit that had terrible reporting and reconciliation issues, I declared a new concept -- "Report Clean". No longer would my programmers work to hide inaccuracy in reports to make them appear plausible. Instead, we would only report what the data held. It was amazing to see how quickly the errors were discovered and how much effort was placed into correcting to root problem -- poor data collection and input practices.