Category Archives: Irish IQ Trainwrecks

Dublin bank bungled foreign exchange transaction (in 2001)

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Following on from this morning’s story about the New Zealand overdraft fiasco, a few further cases of Information Quality trainwrecks in Financial services have come to our attention.

This first one is from 2001 and was found on the BBC.co.uk website, with further reporting from The Telegraph

Bank bungles pesetas/euros

Back in 2001, David Hickey was emigrating from Ireland to Spain. He asked his bank to change IR£1500 into pesetas, but an error in the bank meant that the  amount transferred was in euros, not pesetas. IR£1500 was approximately 300,000 pesetas. Mr Hickey received EUR300,000 into his account.

The bank eventually had to take legal action in Spain to freeze Mr Hickey’s accounts with a view to getting the money back.

At the time, the bank declined to comment further to the media on the matter and the Irish police were of the view that no criminal offence had taken place because of the ‘technical error’ (i.e. IQTrainwreck) involved.

Other Trainwrecks

We’re researching the other IQTrainwrecks that came to light this morning on this theme, not least to make sure we haven’t covered them here already. Expect further updates in the coming days.

Finally caught… the most dangerous driver in Ireland

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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 →

Never mind the prat-nav

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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)

Medication errors affect 1 in 25 in leading Irish Hospital (or does it?)

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[UPDATE]: To carry home the challenges of managing and measuring the quality of information at times, Beaumont Hospital have issued the following press statement regarding the issue mentioned below (this statement is copied from the comment below).

STATEMENT BY BEAUMONT HOSPITAL RE OMBUDSMAN’S REPORT
The Office of the Ombudsman issued a report this morning which highlighted a complaint against Beaumont Hospital regarding the circumstances in which an unprescribed dosage of medication was given to a patient. In her press release, the Ombudsman made reference to an audit of the Kardex system at Beaumont. A figure of 4.3% was given for Kardex transcription errors.

For purposes of absolute clarity, Beaumont Hospital points out that this audit was of approximately 170 reported medication events over a period of two years. This showed there were seven reports of errors made in the transcription of information between Kardex. This is the 4.3% referred to by the Ombudsman and is not 4.3% of all medications administered. It should also be noted that the audit was not of the hospital’s full Kardex system.

There are approximately 500,000 prescriptions written in Beaumont each year and approximately 4.5 million administrations of medication under these prescriptions.

We thank Beaumont Hospital for the clarification presented and gladly publish it in full. The detail contained in the statement from Beaumont Hospital highlights another impact of poor quality information – the negative publicity and causes of concern that can arise from incomplete information made available to the media.

[/Update] 

The Irish Times website carries a story this afternoon of the report by the Ombudsman into medication errors in a leading Irish hospital.

According to the report, Beaumont hospital experienced medication errors in just over 1 in every 25 cases (4.3%) [Note – this figure is clarified by Beaumont Hospital in the update above]  The root cause of this error rate would seem to be the way in which medications and medication instructions are recorded, with key information being recorded manually on patient record cards and certain key data (such as frequency of dosage) occasionally being omitted for a variety of reasons. Furthermore, the transcription of information from patient record cards which have been filled up can lead to errors in transcription, resulting in errors in patient medication.[Beaumont Hospital clarification: “this audit was of approximately 170 reported medication events over a period of two years. This showed there were seven reports of errors made in the transcription of information between Kardex. This is the 4.3% referred to by the Ombudsman and is not 4.3% of all medications administered. It should also be noted that the audit was not of the hospital’s full Kardex system.”]

Given the implications of incorrect medication, both in terms of injury or death of patients or, at the very least, the increased duration of stay for a patient arising from treatment errors.

The Institute of Medicine in the US has published figures which show that the cost to the Healthcare system (in 2006 dollars) per incident of medication error was around $8750 per hospital stay. An article on the website FutureHealthCareUS.com quotes other studies which put the cost at just under $6000 per event.

Given the impact on human health and welfare (up to and including risk of death) and the financial impact on already overstretched healthcare systems, avoidable medication errors count as a definite IQ Trainwreck.

Tracker mortgage off target

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RTE news today reports that AIB Bank (one of the largest banks in Ireland) has admitted an error in applying interest rate changes over a 12 month period to so-called ‘tracker’ mortgages.

This has resulted in customers having underpaid their loans in recent months. The bank is, kindly, offering the affected customers the option of paying the shortfall in one go or spread over the remaining period of their mortgage.

‘Manual Error’ is blamed for the problem, which (according to RTE) affects 500 customers.

Tracker mortgages track the base rate of a specific Central Bank (in Ireland this is the European Central Bank), with a fixed margin payable on top of the base rate.

[Update] The Irish Times this morning reports that the Irish Financial Services Regulator is to examine the Bank’s approach to recouping the under-paid mortgage amounts. Quoting a spokesperson for the Regulator:

“In instances where an institution is seeking to recoup money as a result of the failure of its own internal systems we would expect it to be flexible in terms of the arrangements it comes to with consumers”

This story is also carried in the Irish Examiner news paper today

Leap Year problem hits Irish bank

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The Sunday Business Post newspaper (Ireland’s leading weekly paper dedicated to business news) carried a story this week about errors in calculating mortgage interest due to the 2008 Leap Year which have affected at least one Irish bank. This is an information quality problem we discussed previously on this blog.Of course, the bank’s are simply going to apply the interest missed out to the customer’s accounts retrospectively, with the average additional charge to customers being around €28.50, according to reports. However, the fact that this error has appeared in the national media, and the Halifax’s competitors are all stating that they have had no such problems, suggests that the cost to the bank may be greater in terms of negative PR. In this case the bank made a gross error in defining its information architecture and the core business rules for interest calculations (such as assuming 2008 was not a leap year), and it would seem their systems testing failed to catch the problem until after the event. However, as is often the case, the cost of non-quality information is being passed to the customer, making the immediate ‘problem’ go away (a shortfall in interest payments and profits) while masking the underlying root cause (failure to properly define and test information processing rules for core processes resulting in poor quality information). 

Aer Lingus pricing blunder brings everyone back down to earth (and now the lawyers are involved!)

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The IAIDQ is holding its annual US conference (the IDQ Conference) in San Antonio this September. As a Director of the Association and a potential speaker at the event I’ve been researching my options for flying to the US as cheaply (but comfortably) as possible.

Imagine my dismay when I spotted that I’d missed an opportunity to take advantage of an IQ Trainwreck to get myself to the US on Business class for less than it costs me to get home from work!

Ireland’s RTE news is today reporting that Aer Lingus has cancelled the bookings made by passengers who tried to avail of a €5 (US$8.00 approx) Business Class fare from Dublin to the US, a flight that normally costs €1,775 (just under US$3,000). [update 2008-04-18]Patrick O’Beirne of Systems Modelling Ltd in Gorey has pointed out to me in an email that the <u>actual</u> cost of the flights was a bit higher when taxes, charges and the relative position of the sun are taken into account[/update]

This fare was available on the aerlingus.com website between 7:30am and 9:00am yesterday after (apparently) ‘promotional’ fares were loaded to the website in error. Around 100 people (some sources have it at 300 people, so I can’t vouch for the accuracy of this figure) managed to book the €5 fare, resulting in a potential loss to the airline of at least€177,700 (just under US$280,000).

The airline sent emails to the customers informing them that they had cancelled the bookings as the price was in error, however the Consumer Association has pointed out that the 100 people had valid contracts. The CEO of the National Consumer Agency has sought a meeting with the airline to discuss the situation.

The airline has argued that the fact that ‘economy class’ seats were advertised on the website at €249 should have suggested that there was an error in the €5.00 price.

However, the Press Release from the National Consumer Agency is quite clear that Aer Lingus would be in breach of contract in cancelling the flights and that “blaming a technical error in their booking system is not good enough”.

[update 2008-04-18] It has been reported this morning that a group of 50 property developers who had booked flights at the €5.00 price are starting legal proceedings to force Aer Lingus to honour their contracts. As we don’t have the concept of a class action suit here in Ireland, unless these property developers are part of a consortium that is a legal entity in its own right, that means that Aer Lingus is potentially facing 50 court cases, each requiring legal representation that will cost a lot more than the €17770 shortfall in the ticket price.

Ah… you just have to love lawyers.

Why is this an IQTrainwreck?

Cost to Aer Lingus of honouring the contracts will be €177700. The cost to the airline of the PR fall out from cancelling the contracts would also be significant. The legal costs that will arise now are also likely to be significant.

Irish bank sends debtor details to wrong addresses

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The Irish Examiner reports today that a leading Irish bank accidentally sent details on defaulted loans to the wrong address. Two letters were sent to the one address – which was the wrong one. The contents of the letters contained the correct name and address information for the account holders (it appears from the media report).

This echoes an issue the same bank had in November of last year when 11,000 letters containing confidential bank details were sent to the wrong addresses.

While this most recent issue relates to just two letters relating to two customers. But the real mystery is how they both wound up at the same address.

Media trainwrecks (two of two – aka Presentation Quality is everything)

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Again, with thanks to Damien Mulley we present quite possibly the best example of Information Overload in a press release. It appears that an unnamed media organisation in Dublin passed a press release on to Damien (who apart from blogging intensively and organising the Irish Blog Awards amongst other things is also a journalist).

Unfortunately they forgot to turn off ‘track changes’ in Microsoft Word and the published release contained all the drafting edits that had been done to the document since it was created. My eyes hurt me trying to read the scan of the press release that Damien posted on his blog.. if you look closely enough I swear to you that you can see dolphins or a face or something buried in the text.

Why is this a trainwreck? The press release is garbage. The ‘foot in the door’ to news agencies who might cover the event was entirely ineffective. First impressions are important and the quality of information is ultimately affected by the quality of presentation of that information. A general rule of thumb is that if your head hurts trying to figure out what the actual information is in the midst of the ‘noise’ then it’s poor quality.

Update: To cap it all off, Damien makes clear in comments on this blog post that he shouldn’t have received the release in the first place as he is a Technology journalist, not a music journalist. Again, poor quality information contributing to a trainwreck press release being sent to the wrong person (who then put it up on his blog).

Media trainwrecks (one of two)

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Courtesy of Irish uber-blogger and technology journalist Damien Mulley come two excellent examples of poor quality information getting loose.

The first concerns an article published in the Irish Examiner Newspaper. They published a story this week which puported to show that Irish employers were losing millions of euro due to staff members using Social Networking sites like Bebo or Facebook. Mr Mulley found no fewer than five errors in the article, ranging from the fact that the survey they were referencing was a UK survey, and 50% of the respondents were interviewed in one location (which wasn’t in Ireland) to basic errors in mathematics in working out the cost to the Irish economy. As Damien helpfully points out (when he fixed his own factual errors due to miscalculations), that for the Irish Examiner’s figures to make any sense the average salary in Ireland would need to be over €120k a year.

 …take it from me… it’s not.

As Damien’s site is a blog there are some interesting comments which correct his calculations and provide alternate ways of calculating the costs to the Irish economy of Social Networking. None of them reach the same conclusions as the Irish Examiner.

 The second example will follow in the next post.