From our ever vigilant sources over at The Register comes this story of duplicated information resulting in confusion and costs to the UK Taxpayer.

It seems that the UK DVLA has issued duplicate tax discs to concientous motorists who renewed their motor tax on-line.

A DVLA spokesman told theRegister: “As a result of an error, a number of customers, who recently purchased tax discs on line or by phone, were issued with duplicate tax discs.

“Once the problem was identified, swift action was taken to rectify it. All customers affected are being sent a letter of apology and the erroneous discs have been cancelled.”

So. Let’s sum this one up…

1. Poor quality information in a process resulted in the normal cost of the Motor tax process being higher than it should (because of duplicate postage and printing costs for the certificates sent in error).
2. A further printing and postage expense will be incurred to apologise to motorists for the confusion
3. Analysis will need to be done to identify all the affected motorists, which will require staff to be diverted from other duties or increased costs due to overtime or external IT contractor spend
4. People might bin the wrong tax disc and find themselves technically in breach of the law.

This is a simple example of the costs to organizations of poor quality information. A classic IQTrainwreck scenario.