Author Archives: Daragh O Brien

About Daragh O Brien

Daragh O Brien is the Managing Director of Castlebridge Associates. This site has been one of his side projects for a decade. It needs some love and attention...

#AmazonFail – a classic Information Quality impact

So, Amazon recently delisted thousands (over 57000 to be precise) of books from their search and sales rankings. The Wall Street Journal carries the story, as does the Irish Independent (here), The China Post (here), ComputerWorld (here), the BBC (here)…. and there are many more. In the Twitter-sphere and BlogSphere, this issue was tagged as #AmazonFail. (some blog posts on this can be found here and… oh heck, here’s a link to a google search with over 400,000 results). There are over 13000 seperate Twitter posts about it, including a few highlighting alternatives to Amazon.

We have previously covered Amazon IQTrainwrecks here and here. Both involved inappropriate pushing of Adult material to customers and searchers on the Amazon site. Perhaps they are just over-compensating now?

It appears that these books were mis-categorised as “Adult” material, which Amazon excludes from searches and sales rankings. Because the books were, predominantly but not exlusively, relating to homosexual lifestyles, this provoked a storm of comment that Amazon was censoring homosexual material. However books about health and reproduction were also affected.

Amazon describe the #AmazonFail incident as a “ham fisted” cataloguing error which they attribute to one employee entering data in one field in one system. One commentator ascribes the blame to an algorithm in Amazon’s ranking and cataloguing tools. And a hacker has claimed that it was he who did it, exploiting a vulnerability in Amazon’s website. Continue reading

Dead girl given truancy warning

Courtesy of #dataquality twitterers Steve Tuck and Stephen Bonner comes this story from the BBC about a school in Cheshsire whose parents received a truancy notice about their daughter which threatened to ban her from her end of year prom for being over 30% below the target attendance rate for students.

The young girl, Megan, had possibly the best excuse ever for playing hookey from school however. According to her mother:

“Megan doesn’t go to that school any more. She’s been dead for two months now so it’s not surprising her attendance is low.”

It appears that inconsistencies between two computer systems in the school resulted in the school’s left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing with regard to student information.

Megan’s name had been taken off the school roll when she died, and removed from the main school database,” the spokeswoman said.

“However, unknown to the school, her details had remained in a different part of the computer system and were called up when the school did a mail merge letter to the parents of all Year 11 students about their prom”.

Reading the comments from the software providers in the BBC story, it would also appear that the software lacks a “dead student” flag to enable them to exclude deceased students from administrative mailings.

This is a classic IQTrainwreck because it resulted in distress and upset to Megan’s parents, landed on the BBC News website (with video no less) , has been flashed across Twitter, and has now wound up here.

Also, this failure of the computer systems to allow the left hand of the school (the student register systems) to know what the right hand (the Capita system) was doing is not dissimilar to the circumstances of the recent court case of Ferguson v British Gas where the defences put forward by British Gas that erroneous debt collection letters were ‘computer generated’ and so they couldn’t have been harassing the plaintiff were dismissed by the Court of Appeal in England and Wales.

So we can add a potential legal risk to the list of reasons why this is an IQTrainwreck.

Microsoft Ex-Hell?

Techcrunch, via The Register, tells us of an information quality error by a small software company based in Redmond, Washington called Microsoft. You may have heard of them.

It would seem that Microsoft has written to some of the former employees it recently made redundant to inform them that they’ve had too much money paid to them in their severance lump sum and demanding the money back.

Commenters over on The Register have  speculated as to the root cause, with a calculation error in Excel being flagged as the likely culprit. In  their letter, Microsoft blame the whole kerfuffle on “an administrative error”.  What’s that software that administrators use to make calculations on rows and columns of data on a computer? Continue reading

Finally caught… the most dangerous driver in Ireland

Yesterday’s Irish Times carried a story of how, after some extensive detective work, the Irish Police finally tracked down the most dangerous driver in Ireland, a Polish gentleman by the name of Prawo Jazdy.

This individual was given hundreds of speeding tickets and parking tickets over the past few years, and by June 2007 he had over 50 separate entries in the Irish Police computer system. So slippery was this offender that he kept giving police a different address almost every time he was stopped and ticketed.

He was finally brought to book by a quick thinking officer in the Traffic Corps of the Irish Police who tracked him down using a structured Master Data source. Surely this is an example of Information and Intelligence lead policing at its best? Continue reading

Duff Data dumps 1 million on the dole (social security)… in France.

The Register carries a story this week that clearly shows  the impact of poor quality information on people, particularly in this time of tightening economic conditions when getting a job is hard enough.

It appears that the French Government’s Police Vetting database is not very complete or accurate. According to the French Data Protection authorities (CNIL), this highlights the

serious issues over the provenance of data illustrate all too clearly what happens when the government starts to collect data on its citizens without putting adequate measures in place for updating and accuracy checking.

It would appear that there are errors in 83% of records, with a range of degrees of seriousness. The errors in the database arise as a result of “the simple mechanism of mis-recording actual verifiable data”. In other words, poorly designed processes,  poorly designed data creation/maintenance processes, poorly trained staff, and a lack of information quality control contribute to the errors.

But what  of the cost to the French economy? Well, every person who has been blacklisted in error by this system is potentially drawing social security payments. On top of that they are not paying taxes into the French economy.

If, in a month, they are drawing €100 in social insurance instead of paying €100 in taxes, the net loss to the French economy is €200 per month.  €200 x 1Million =€200 million per month, or €2,400,000,000 per year.

So, on the basis of a very rough guesstimate, the value to the French economy of fixing these errors is €2.4billion per year. Is that a business case?

Trusted Electoral Information

Introduction

Warning – this is a long and detailed examination of a complicated trainwreck

[Update] The IAIDQ has issued a press release on this topic…Election Throws A Spotlight On Poor Data Quality. [/update]

In every democracy citizens must be able to trust that the State will not impede their right to vote through any act or omission on the part of the State or its agents. Regular visitors to the iqtrainwrecks.info blog will know that Ireland has it’s fair share of problems with its electoral register. Of course, that isn’t news.

However, the Washington Post has reported last weekend (18th October) that the US elections are being plagued by similar issues. The New York Times covers the same ground in this story from 9th October. With a slightly important vote coming up on the 4th of November, that is news

In a saga that has found its way to the US Supreme Court (in at least one case so far), voters are being forced to re-establish their eligibility to vote before the election on November 4th. As the Post points out, “many voters may not know that their names have been flagged” which could “cause added confusion on Election Day”.

So what is going on (apart from the lawyers getting richer of the inevitable law suits and voters finding themselves reduced to just “Rs” as they lose their Vote)? Where is the trust being lost? Why is this an IQ Trainwreck?

A Change of Process and a Migration of Data

Under the Help America Vote Act, responsibility for the management of electoral registers was moved from locally managed (i.e. county level) to state administered. This has been trumpeted as a more efficient and accurate way to manage the accuracy of electoral lists. After all, the states also have the driver licensing data, social welfare data and other data sources to use to validate that a voter is a voter and not a gold fish.

However, where discrepancies arise between the information on the voter registration and other official records, the voter registration is rejected. And as anyone who has dealt with ‘officialdom’ can testify to, very often those errors are outside the control of the ‘data subject’ (in this case the voter). The legislation requires election officials to use the state databases first, with recourse to the Federal databases (such as social security) supposedly reserved as a ‘last resort’ because ,according the the New York Times, “using the federal databases is less reliable than the state lists and is more likely to incorrectly flag applications as invalid”.

Of course, for a comment on the accuracy of state databases I’ve found this story on The Risks Digest which seems to sum things up (however, as a caveat I’ll point out that the story is 10 years old, but my experience is that when crappy data gets into a system it’s hard to get it out). In the linked-to story, the author (living in the US) tells of her experience with her drivers license which insisted on merging her first initial and middle name (the format she prefers to use) to create a new non-name that didn’t match her other details. That error then propagated onto her tax information and appeared on a refund cheque she received.

In short, it would seem she might have a problem voting (if her drivers license and tax records haven’t been corrected since).

Accuracy of Master Data, and consistency of Master Data

The anecdote above highlights the need for accuracy in the master data that the voter lists are being validated against. For example, the Washington Post article cites the example of Wisconsin, which flags voters data discrepancies “as small as a middle initial or a typo in a birth date”.

I personally don’t use the apostrophe in my surname. I’m O Brien, not O’Brien. Also, you can spell my first name over a dozen different ways (not counting outright errors). A common alternate spelling is Darragh, as opposed to Daragh. It looks like that in Wisconsin I’d have high odds of joining the four members of their 6-strong state elections board who all failed validation due to mismatches on data.

In Alabama, there is a constitutional ban on people convicted of felony crimes of “moral turpitude” voting. The Governor’s Office has issued one masterlist of 480 offences, which included “disrupting a funeral” as a felony. The Courts Administrator and Attorney General issued a second list of more violent crimes to be used in the voter validation process. Unfortunately, it seems that the Governor’s list was used until very recently instead of the more ‘lenient’ list provided by the Courts Administrator.

Combine this with problems with the accuracy of other master data, such as lists of people who were convicted of the aforementioned felonies and there is a recipe for disenfranchisement. Which is exactly what has happened to a former governor (a Republican at that) called Guy Hunt.

In 1993 Mr Hunt had been convicted of a felony related to ethics violations He received a pardon in 1998. In 2008 his name was included on a “monthly felons check” sent to a county Registrar. Mr Hunt’s name shouldn’t have been on the list.

According to the Washington Post article, Mr Hunt isn’t the only person who was included on the felon list. 40% of the names on the list seen by the Washington Post had only committed misdemeanors. In short, the information was woefully inaccurate.

But it is being used to de-register voters and deprive them of their right tohave their say on the 4th November.

The Washington Post also cites cases where US citizens have been flagged as non-citizens (and therefore not entitled to vote) due to problems with social security numbers. Apparently some election officials have found the social security systems to be “not 100% accurate”. But this is the reason why they are supposed only to be used when the state systems on their own are insufficient to verify the voter. That’s the lawapparently).

Continue reading

Never mind the prat-nav

Sat-Nav, it’s everywhere. When my mother-in-law starts asking me about it and my wife starts to swear by it (rather than at me) on long journeys I know that the technology has reached mass market acceptance.

Spare a thought then for hauliers, tour buses and other large vehicles trying to navigate the Ring of Kerry using their trusty Sat Navs. As reported by the Irish Examiner newspaper today, it seems that satnav reliant drivers are going the wrong way around the Ring of Kerry route and are getting stuck in the many narrow tunnels and mountain passes that dot the route.

“Large vehicles should go around the spectacular road anti-clockwise, starting from Killarney and heading in towards Killorglin. However, Killarney FF Cllr Tom Doherty said numerous vehicles using GPS this summer went against the traffic flow and got stuck. ” (from Irish Examiner).

The root cause here would seem to be manifold, but ultimately boil down to the accuracy of information and how that information is presented.

The traffic flow arrangement on the Ring of Kerry has no legal standing at present, despite having been agreed a number of years ago. Therefore, satnav manufacturers may not have factored it into their route maps and underlying rules because they didn’t know about it (completeness of information). However, it also appears that the signage around the Ring of Kerry isn’t sufficiently clear to alert bus and truck drivers that there is a non-standard traffic flow in place (quality of information presentation).

The Irish Examiner reports that Killarney Town Council is to write to Satnav manufacturers to alert them to the issue.

Of course, Co. Kerry isn’t the only place where over-reliance on satnav has landed people in difficulty…

A Czech lorry driver got stuck in a narrow lane because his satnav told him to go that way (knowledge worker failure)

A Satnav system directs drivers to a bridge that doesn’t exist (accuracy of information)
Who’d have thought that two places might have the same name? (accuracy of information)

Conclusion

Satnav is a useful tool, but there are issues with the quality of information provided by satnavs. Of course, there are also problems with some of the knowledge workers (drivers) who blindly follow their satnav directions without applying common sense to ensure that the size of the road is consistent with the size of their vehicle. Also, satnav errors are often compounded by poor quality of signage and other information that might help drivers make better decisions (like not driving into the deep river ford)

Flight booking boo boos

So, I’m booking my flights to the IDQ 2008 conference in San Antonio. I’m flying with Continental.

As with most airlines I have to provide a contact telephone number for them to contact me before, during or after travel.Their website allows me to select the country that my phone number is in. My phone number is an Irish one (my cell phone drinks, fights and bleaches its hair to pretend to be Alexander the Great, just like Colin Farrell.)

So I selected my country and enter my phone number (087-63xxxxx).Continental present this back to me as 01108763xxxxx. So I go again, putting in 00353, +353 and all other variants I can think of.

Continental comes back to me with variants on a 011-[long string of garbage] telephone number.

So. What happens when Continental try to ring me when I’m away? Why have they wasted my time submitting (and resubmitting) this information over and over again when they simply bugger it up on me? Why, regardless of what country I select do Continental want me to live in America?I think I’ll ring some of the variants that Continental spat out to me and see who answers…. 

Economic impact of Information Quality

First off – an apology for not posting a bit more regularly. It’s not that there aren’t any IQ Trainwrecks, it’s just that there have been so many recently we’ve been spoiled for choice for the ones to use and we haven’t had time to edit and compile them all.

However, one that jumped out of the headlines this morning is the news that Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs in the UK has shelved it’s home sales statistics report until September , “adding to concerns over the quality of official data which help inform interest rate policy at a time when the economy is teetering on the edge of recession” (according the the Irish Times).

Just what you need in a time of economic crisis – inaccurate and unreliable information to support planning or even measure how good or bad things are. According to the report:

City economists and even the Bank of England have been questioning the reliability of several official date series including trade, growth and retail sales.

Apparently, inconsistencies were found between statistics to published this month (August) and last month. According to the HMRC spokesperson quoted in the article:

“All months in the statistical series are affected, with the differences showing falls in some months and increases in others. We are working to understand the reason for these differences so that a reliable set of statistics can be produced.”

Interestingly, from an Information Quality perspective, one of the main groups that ‘consume’ this information don’t seem to be surprised by the existence of errors but rather by the fact that the report has been withdrawn.

The article highlights a possible root cause of error:

“The ONS, which is also replacing its main measure of wages because it was found it did not capture the true picture, relocated from London to Newport in Wales this year in a move to cut down on costs – leading to a large number of staff changes “

Why is this an IQ trainwreck?Absence of timely and reliable information about economic performance affects the ability of the government to plan and manage economic policy to manage the impacts of an economic down turn and avoid more serious difficulties for individuals.

Plumbing the depths of information quality

Ireland’s Evening Herald newspaper carried a story recently about the costs and impacts of address data quality.

To cut a long story short, the family at Address A made enquiries with a heating contractor/plumber about the cost of a home heating system. A short time later, the plumbers arrived at Address A (who had only made an enquiry) and proceeded to rip up floorboards and fit radiators etc.

After 4 hours working, the plumbers in House A got a call. They were at the wrong address. They should have been at House B, which was an address that differed by one word from House A.

The owner of House A subsequently sued to have her home restored and to compensate her for distress. Going to the wrong address (and not noticing it for four hours) cost the plumbing firm €5000 plus legal costs.