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The Data Quality Assessment is a targeted offering to determine the degree to which data actually adheres to current business rules governing the data. This service is a data profiling exercise to illustrate to customers the patterns found in the data, including the outliers. MetaGovernance utilizes a variety of query tools to profile the data and present actionable findings.
Data profiling is a governance technique that is geared to letting the data “speak”. As a form of data mining, data profiling looks for normal patterns and outliers in the data. By comparison, in the world of analytics, data mining is used to determine actual patterns in data. Instead of basing business decisions on common perceptions of customer or industry behavior, data mining enables decision-making with actual trends. There are sophisticated computer algorithms that mine millions or billions of rows of data and let the strongest patterns fight their way onto the analysts radar. In similar fashion, data profiling uses different technologies to look for patterns in data that can result in Information Governance issues.
Data residing in typical systems has been around for several years. Over these years the underlying business rules used to operate the business have morphed and evolved. Unfortunately, new business rules are rarely applied retroactively to old data. Conflicting sets of business rules come back to haunt the business during Data Warehouse projects, system conversions, and the overall implementation of Information Governance.
Data profiling is part of a data quality audit that is geared to understanding the true state of the data. These data audits are a critical initial step to resolving ongoing data quality problems. MetaGovernance has found that conflicting business rules are second only to the impact of adjustments when it comes to chronic data problems.
A data quality assessment is an excellent way to begin the Information Governance journey. Results of the data profile audit are actionable and can be a focalizing point for an Information Governance council or working group. MetaGovernance can provide dashboards that display the results of the data quality assessment. These dashboards provide a visualization of the current state, plus can be used to monitor progress made to resolving the issues identified.
MetaGovernance has determined that adjustments made across transactional systems, and outside of the systems in spreadsheets and of user-developed applications, are the root cause of most data reconciliation issues. The MetaGovernance data quality assessment is an excellent way to determine the degree to which data across your information architecture is accurate or a hodgepodge of conflicting data.
The old metaphor “garbage in – garbage out” is at the root of effective Information Governance. The other metaphor that applies here is that it “makes no sense to clean up the lake if you are still polluting the river”. Having the fundamental information needed to run your business, or analyze the health of business operations, is directly related to the current state of data. Data profiling in the context of a data quality assessment is a critical step to understanding the current state.
Contact MetaGovernance and let us remove the shroud of mystery around the quality of your data and provide you with an action plan to move forward.
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