So says Melissa Threadgill in the Boston Globe. She continues: “State
agencies should adopt common data standards, preferably in concert with the
federal government, to make data-sharing between agencies easier, and they
should prioritize operating on platforms that can easily communicate.”
The
lack of data discipline in government organizations is becoming a major issue.
Taxpayers have experience of data foul-ups in their roles at work or as
consumers. They know that paying a dead person welfare checks is a systems
error traceable to poor data management. A generation ago, you might have been
able to get away with blaming “computer error”. Not any more.
Ironically, the more public sector organizations highlight the potential benefits of big data, the more they expose themselves to criticism of their performance with small data. If you expect the public to follow and support big data projects, then you are acknowledging they are data savvy. And you can be held to account for inefficiencies stemming from poor data handling.
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