Category Archives: Irish IQ Trainwrecks

Quality Information – it can be a lottery!

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It’s been a little while since our last post of an IQTrainwreck. That doesn’t mean that they dont’ still occur. Only this past weekend Irish national broadcaster RTE published inaccurate information about the winning numbers in the Irish National Lottery draw at the end of the broadcast. .We’d like to show you video footage of the error but, to avoid compounding the error, RTE have edited the last few seconds from the end of the recording which is available on the RTE website.

According to The Irish Times RTE blame a software error for the incorrect display of numbers, which the broadcaster was forced to correct through continuity announcements during the remainder of the evening. Apparently a software update was applied ahead of the draw on Saturday 17th December.

The Irish National Lottery has expressed concern that anything might affect the collection of the winning prize, a trivial amount of only €4.9 million but point out that there is more than one way for a person to check their lottery numbers.

 

There are a few lessons to learn here for Information Quality Professionals

  1. When you are presenting mission critical information in time-sensitive environments, it is imperative that you have any changes to process, software, or technical architecture well tested before ‘show time’.
  2. When you are relying on the quality of information for critical decisions it is often worthwhile to take reference data points from other sources to validate and verify the source you are using, no matter how trusted or trustworthy they may have been in the past. Trust but Verify is a good mantra
  3. When using data for decision making where accuracy is a “Critical to Quality” factor you should seek out the most authoritative source. Often this mean going to the real world object or source data creator (in this case the National Lottery itself) rather than relying on a normally reliable surrogate source (the National Broadcaster in this case) in case errors or defects have crept into the data which is being presented by the surrogate.

 

 

Accounting Accountability

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From Europe we learn of two stories with similar characteristics that tick all the boxes for classic Information Quality Trainwrecks.

 

From Germany we hear that due to errors in internal accounting in the recently nationalised Hypo Real Estate, the German National debt was overstated by €55 Billion (US$76 bn approx). This was doubly embarrassing for Germany as they had spent the last while criticising the accuracy of accounting by the Greek Government.

According to the Financial Post website:

In an era of austerity where their government has squabbled tirelessly for two years over a mooted €6-billion tax cut, Germans found it hard to fathom that their government was so suddenly and unexpectedly 55-billion euros better off.

The net effect of the error being found and fixed is that Germany’s Debt to GDP ratio will be 2.6% lower than previously thought.

The root cause appears to be a failure to standardise accounting practices between two banks who were being merged as part of a restructuring of the German banking system. This resulted in the missing billions being accounted for incorrectly on the balance sheet of the German government who owns the banks in question.

From Ireland we have a similar story of missing Billions. In this case a very simple accounting error resulted in monies that were loaned from one State agency (the National Treasury Management Agency) to another State Agency (the Housing Finance Agency) being accounted for by the Department of Finance in a way which resulted in €3.6billion being added to the Irish National Debt figures.

This (almost co-incidentally) resulted in a 2% misstatement of the Irish National debt. Also co-incidentally it is exactly the same figure as the Irish Government is seeking to reduce net expenditure by in its forthcoming budget.

The problem was first spotted by the NTMA in August of last year (2010) but, despite a number of emails and phone calls from the NTMA to the Department of Finance the error was not fixed until October 2011. For some reason there was a failure in the Department to recognise the error, understand the significance, or take action on it.

The Secretary General of the Department of Finance blames middle-management:

Secretary general of the department Kevin Cardiff said the error was made at “middle management” level and was never communicated up to a more senior level. He said the department was initiating an internal inquiry to examine the issue and would establish an external review to look at the systems and to put safeguards in place to ensure such mistakes were not repeated in the future.

Information Quality Professionals of course would consider looking at the SYSTEM, and part of that is the organisation culture which is in place in the Department which prevented a significant error in information from being acted upon.

Lessons to Learn:

There are a lot of lessons to learn from these stories. Among them:

  1. When bringing data together from different organisations, particularly when those organisations are being merged, it is important to ensure y0u review and standardise the “Information Product Specification” so that everyone knows what the standard terms, business rules, and meaning of data are in the NEW organisation and ACROSS organisational boundaries. Something as simple as knowing who has to put a value in the DEBIT column and where the corresponding CREDIT needs to be put should be clearly defined. Operational Definitions of critical concepts are essential.
  2. When errors are found, there needs to be clear and open channels of communication that allow the errors to be logged, assessed, and acted on where they have a material or significant effect. Organisational cultures where internal politics or historic arrogance lead managers to assume that the issue isn’t there or isn’t their problem ultimately result in the issue becoming bigger and more difficult to deal with.
  3. Don’t shoot the messenger. Don’t blame the knowledge worker. But ensure that there are mechanisms by which people can take accountability and responsibility. And that starts at the the top.

No room at the Inn

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[UPDATE – 17 August 2012: It has been drawn to our attention that the Macroom.ie website has been redesigned since this post was written. None of the links referred to below exist on the new site. This post addresses an issue that was identified as existing on one day in 2011 but which, when we discussed with contacts in the hotel industry, we learned of similar issues where tourists arrive at a hotel believing they had a booking but had in fact booked at a different hotel of the same or similar name and URL in a different place.

The new macroom.ie website is well worth a visit and has lots of interesting information about Macroom and its surrounding localities, including my personal favourite, the Prince August factory (which I used to order moulds and metal from to make toy soldiers as a child).]

Via Twitter we came across this tale of Information Quality fun and games from the South West of Ireland.

Macroom is a popular tourist destination in Co. Cork. The local Town Council have invested in a portal website for the town Macroom.ie.  One of the boasts of Macroom is that is just 45 minutes away by car from the tourist hotspot that is Killarney, with its National Park and other attractions. (Macroom itself is home to Ireland’s only Toy Soldier factory).

 

On Macroom.ie you can link to various hotels in the locale to book accommodation. There is just one small problem.

The Riverside Park Hotel that is linked to from this site isn’t in Macroom. It is in Wexford. Over 3 hours away by car.

View Larger Map

Of course, this could have been avoided if, as part of the information creation process (i.e. building the link) some attention had been paid to the physical address of the Riverside Park Hotel and Leisure Club that was being linked to rather than selecting the first link that appears in a search for “Riverside Park Hotel Macroom” on Google (the .com variant of the .ie address already linked to here). [note that as Google search algorithms change the search results you get today may not match the results we got in August 2011]
Or, as might also be the case, the problem could have arisen now due to a back-end editing error that resulted in a typo putting “.com” in the linked-to URL rather than “.ie” and it would have been easily fixed in time.
[update- 17 August 2012] In any event, the site has been updated now to a new look and feel and the links we used to track this issue are no longer active. But it still serves as a cautionary tale for anyone creating web content to double check links to make sure they point to the intended location. [/update]

 

It could be YOU (and 44,999 others)

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The Irish National Lottery had an embarrassment last week when their Bank Holiday promotion draw went awry.

As part of a special draw for the August Bank Holiday weekend, the Lottery were offering a prize of a Jaguar XK convertible as an additional prize to the person who won the jackpot.

Unfortunately, due to apparent “human error” the National Lottery Company informed anyone who checked their numbers on-line and had matched any combination of numbers that they had won the car, even if the money value of the prize was as little as €5.00. They hadn’t, but the story still made headline news. Some outlets report that disgruntled non-winners are considering legal action.

It is important to have validation checks in place on reports and publication of data, particularly where that data would be of value or could be relied upon to the detriment of another person.

Unhealthy Healthcare data

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For a change (?) it is nice (?) to see stories about healthcare IQ Trainwrecks that don’t necessarily involve loss of life, injury, tears, or trauma.

Today’s Irish Examiner newspaper carries a story of the financial impacts of poor quality data in healthcare administration. At a time when the budgets for delivery of healthcare in Ireland are under increasing pressure due to the terms of the EU/IMF bailout of Ireland, it is essential that the processes for processing payments operate efficiently. It seems they do not:

  1. Staff continued to be paid pensions where they retired from one role and then re-entered the Health Service in a different role (HSE South)
  2. Absence of Controls meant staff who were on sick leave with pension entitlements being paid continued to be paid when they returned to work (HSE South)
  3. Pensions were calculated off incorrect bases for staff who were on secondment/shared with other agencies (HSE South)
  4. Inaccurate data about the ages of dependents resulted in overpayments of death in service benefits (HSE South).
  5. “Inappropriate” filing systems were resulting in “needlessly incurring wastage of scarce resources” (HSE Dublin/Mid Lenister)

 

Poor quality information costs between 10% and 35% of turnover in the average organisation. So the HSE may not be too bad. But the failure of controls and processes resulting in poor quality data leading to financial impacts is all too familiar.

Bank overcharging in Ireland (again)

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In a taste of the change of emphasis that is seeping through the global financial services industry, the Irish Financial Services Regulatory Authority is pursuing 24 cases of overcharging by banks and insurance companies, according to this morning’s Irish Independent

Of course, stories of financial services overcharging and other information quality disasters in that industry are not new to the IQTrainwrecks reader. Over the years we’ve covered them here, here, here, here, here , here, here, and here (to select just a few).

We’ve also covered the growing “hard touch” trend in Financial Services that is bringing a clear “cost of non-quality” to bear on banking/financial services processes (see this post from August of last year).

Why is this now an IQTrainwreck again?

  • Regulators are adopting a tougher line with banks about overcharging/undercharging (a bit like the regulators did in my former industry – telecommunications).

The new chief of the Irish Financial Services regulator is concerned about the number of overcharging cases and recently said that:

It is clear from recent cases that change is needed in how firms handle charging and pricing issues.

  • Financial services companies, facing into severe cutbacks in budgets and man power are potentially increasingly exposed to the risks of manual work arounds in processes simply stopping, end-user computing controls not being run,  and ultimately inaccuracies and errors creeping into the information they hold about the money they hold for or have loaned to customers.

As the regulatory focus shifts from ‘light touch’ to ‘velvet fist’, those financial services companies who invest in appropriate strategies for managing the quality of information in a culture of quality will be best placed to avoid regulatory penalties.

Perhaps they should have checked their listings twice?

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The Irish Sunday Independent reports this past weekend that the Irish State Broadcaster RTE is facing legal action from its erstwhile privately owned competitor TV3  arising from what are described as “significant and egregious” errors in the listings published for TV3’s programmes over the Christmas period in the RTE owned listing’s magazine “The RTE Guide”. The errors affect listings over the core Christmas period and also the time of one movie which is due to be broadcast tonight at 9pm but which is listed incorrectly in the Guide.

In a wonderful example which highlights the potential downstream cost and revenue implications of poor quality information, TV3 says the error is so serious that it could have a fundamental impact on its Christmas viewing figures.

And, in TV-land, viewing figures translate into hard-to-come-by-in-a-recession advertising revenues.

TV3 have asked for RTE to pulp all copies of the RTE Guide still in shops and to replace them with reprints which show the correct listings. Failing this, they have asked RTE to give prime-time advertising coverage on TV and radio to TV3 programmes over the Festive Season, which would have the effect of reducing the prime-time advertising slots which RTE would have already sold over Christmas, hitting RTE’s revenue streams as well.

RTE, for their part, blame a 3rd party supplier for the errors.

Of course, this writer’s thoughts are with the ultimate information consumers here… the viewing public. If my house as a teenager was anything to go by, the RTE Guide will have been used as the basis for negotiations about who gets to see TV ‘live’ versus programming the video recorder.

A while ago, Daragh O Brien wrote on his blog about the likely rise in Information Quality litigation, particularly as studies have shown that people become more litigious during a recession. This looks like one of those cases and it seems 2010 will be an interesting year for Information Quality management principles in Ireland.

No smoke without ire – Life Insurance Overcharging in Ireland

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RTE News in Ireland ran a story last night on overcharging by Irish Life Assurance companies arising from a mis-classification of customers as smokers. (link to the item is here, but you may not be able to access it if you are not in Ireland).

On foot of two complaints, the Irish Financial Services Ombudsman investigated two companies and has identified up to 500 customers affected.  However more customers may be affected in other companies .

The two companies affected blamed “computer and administrative errors” for the misclassification and the resulting overcharging. In other words, an Information Quality problem.

The financial impact for the two customers who complained was between €1100 and €2500 on policies of different lengths. Taking a crude average value, this would suggest that for the 500 cases the Ombudsman suspects in the two companies he looked at the total cost of refunds will be in the order of €900,000.

The cost of the investigation of possible errors and the correction of records would, of course, be on top of this amount.

The Financial Services Obmudsman has asked the Irish Financial Services Regulator to conduct an industry wide audit of all Life Assurance companies to identify further instances of this kind of overcharging based on misclassification of customers. As a result, the total amount of refunds will inevitably rise, as will the cost to the industry of inaccurate information.

The news report makes no mention of the potential Data Protection issues arising here under Irish Data Protection law, which does require information to be kept accurate and up to date. But the Irish Financial Ombudsman used to be the Data Protection Commissioner, so I am sure he has flagged that to the affected institutions himself.

Lost in Translation

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Not a trainwreck in the strict sense of the word or on the scale of other cases we’ve logged recently, but this story from the Irish Examiner does illustrate the importance of language and terminology in communicating important information. Breakdowns in the transfer of important information can often cause distress and a failure to meet expectations.

It seems that on an Aer Lingus flight to the US the crew were warning passengers of turbulence and advising them to return to their seats. Unfortunately, the wrong message got relayed in French, resulting in Francophones aboard the flight fearing for their lives as the message they heard was that they were to prepare for an emergency landing, which over the Atlantic could only mean ditching in the ocean.

Thankfully this was not the case, but there were a few worried minutes until cabin crew realised the error, apologised to passengers and calmed everyone down.

Similar miscommunications happen all the time in business and IT where there are subtle difference in the meaning of words used in niche disciplines. For example, to a Marketing person an SME is a Small to Medium Business, where as IT know them as a “Subject Matter Expert”.

Irish State Exam leak being studied.

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A serious complication has emerged in Leaving Certificate exams run by the Irish State each year.. An exam Superindtendent accidentally distributed the wrong paper in one exam centre earlier this week. He put out the exam questions for Paper 2 of the English examination, which wasn’t the subject being examined. The paper was, it seems, only on students’ desks for a few minutes before the error was noticed. However, in this age of twitter, bebo, myspace, facebook and such things, details of the exam questions were soon being discussed in school yards the length and breadth of the country. 

To make matters worse, the Superintendent in question failed to notify the Department of Education until more than 6 hours after the paper was leaked.

As with all things governmental, an investigation is underway. Denials of responsibility have issued from various entities involved.  The Superintendent in question has been dismissed. The exam is being rescheduled, causing disruption to study timetables across the land.

But an examination (no pun intended) of the facts reveals a telling IQ Trainwreck.

One of the factors that determines the quality of information is the quality of information presentation. Indtroducing ambiguity into visual information invites error. Tom Redman, in his book Data Driven, describes the presentation of information as a key step in how information is used and a key part of its complexity. Redman tells us that a number of disciplines need to come together to make even the simplest information and data useful, including:

Presenting data in ways that make it easy for customers to understand and use them. Only in this last step do data and information contribute to internal operations and decisions…

Packaging two sets of highly sensitive information in highly similar packaging which is similar enough that a warning is required makes it hard for customers (Redman uses “customers” to mean the actual consumers of the information – in this case the Superintendent) invites misunderstanding and error.

Yes, the Superintendent could have and should have double checked the paper was the right paper before handing it out, but a key contributing cause was the use of overly similar packaging for both exams.

  • The Superintendent didn’t report a leak of sensitive information in a timely manner

All too often this happens in business. A laptop gets stolen, a memory stick gets mislaid, sensitive information gets left on a train. A key element of the response to this kind of problem is knowing that there is actually a problem, so early reporting to authorities of the leak is imperative. Had the State Examinations Commission had the information in a timely manner perhaps the cost of fixing the gaffe would be less.

  • The cost of remedying the issue is now put at approximately EUR 1 Million

The solution that the Department of Education and State Examinations Commission has come up with is to run a totally new exam paper on Saturday. That means:

  • Extra costs for transport for students to the exams (where State-funded school transport is used)
  • Extra salary costs for Superintendents and their assistants
  • Extra salary costs for school staff who are required to be on-site during exams.
  • The costs of printing a whole new batch of exam papers.

And of course, it being a Saturday:

The SEC is finalising arrangements for a deferred sitting of English papers for a small number of students from the Jewish community after getting legal advice that asking them to sit an exam on their Sabbath, when their religion prohibits it and it is against their conscience, could have been unconstitutional. All other students will be expected to attend, in line with other timetabled exams.

For more on that particular complication, see the Irish Times’ detailed story.

So, why is this an IQTrainwreck?

  1. The similarity in packaging on the exam papers was a key root cause. This is (or should be) a straightforward process of ensuring that all exam subjects and levels are distinctly colour coded and ensuring that packaging is not similar. Issuing a reminder is simply trying to inspect a defect out of the process. Yes, the Superintendent has to carry responsibility as well for not double checking but avoidable similarity should have been avoided (ergo preventing the confusion)
  2. The lack of rigour regarding the reporting of the accidental distribution of the wrong paper is inexcusable. 
  3. The cost impact of the error is extremely significant, particularly given the current state of Irish Government finances. EUR1 Million is a challenging amount to find in your budget at short notice.
  4. The disruptive impact on students during a stressful time can’t be underestimated. 
  5. The further complication presented by Ireland’s multi-culturalism adds further challenges (and potentially costs) for the SEC, the Department, and the students.

(On that note of multiculturalism, one is left wondering if the ISM school in Tripoli, Libya that offers the Irish Leaving Certificate to its students will have received their replacement exam papers yet of if they are even aware of the issue.)