Although it isn’t exactly breaking news (from late 2005), this article really highlights the personal impact of information quality on individuals. It talks about Appriss, which provides “innovative technology solutions that help hundreds of local, state, and Federal government agencies serve and protect their citizens”. One of their flagship products provides automated victim notification, which will let the victim of a crime know when the offender is being released from prison. Sounds like a useful thing, providing people with the information they need in an efficient manner.

During a maintenance period (in the middle of the night), the State of Ohio sent a file containing 3,000 names to Appriss. The company did what it was supposed to and notified the victims, even going so far as to wait until the morning to start making calls so as not to disturb anyone. In essence, they did their job by the book, and (I am guessing) meeting their SLA. The folks in government made a regrettable but honest mistake.

Appriss is not an evil corporation and the Ohio state government are not complete buffoons. These things really do happen, all the time and at all levels. The problem is that the cost of an error is incredibly high. Not a lost revenue opportunity, but true emotional anguish for the people who need it the least.

My suggestions for improving these processes (and hopefully avoiding future problems) are:

1. Define what constitutes a valid transfer between systems. The systems did catch that the file was sent at a time where phone calls could not be made, good catch. Was it normal for files to be delivered at that time? Was it normal for a file of that size to be transferred? Had those calls been made before? Was there a timestamp in the file? Was it accurate? There are a lot of subtle and different ways of profiling data to see if it is “off”. Due to the level of visibility of an error it would be worth it to do whatever it takes to find bad data.
2. Make automation as transparent and visible as possible. Would an automated email confirmation have prevented this situation from occurring?
3. Continually improve your processes. Use this (and every) situation as an opportunity to make things better.

NOTE: I originally saw this mentioned in Baseline, props to them. If you are interested in IT and data, this is an invaluable resource.