There was an interesting article in the Chicago Tribune about some information quality issues between the Minneapolis Police Department and the FBI. Since I had already discussed some issues around crime reporting in the UK, I thought I should try and balance things out across the pond

This story interested me at first because of one of its headlines:

The department said the FBI advised it to send the faulty figures to meet deadline.

Makes it sound like someone is being really pig-headed, doesn’t it? The usual story about the big organization vs. common sense. Originally, I wanted to call this posting “Quality vs. Deadlines” and get a chance to rant about how organizations prioritize information quality. That is, until I read the actual story.

Here’s what actually happened (in a nutshell):

1. The MPD discovered that there was a major issue in their process for gathering crime statistics.
2. The MPD notified the FBI that they did not want to submit this data until it was correct.
3. The FBI decided they would rather have bad data submitted so that the city could meet its deadline for its preliminary report (released this week).
4. The FBI will accept the corrected data and put it into the final report (released in October).

Sounds pretty reasonable, right? Everyone is trying to get the best information possible and incorporate it into the overall process. The FBI will put in the effort to make sure that things are right. The MPD is much chagrined about the error, didn’t kill the messenger, and took institutional ownership for the problem.

[A police spokesperson] was quick to compliment the crime analyst who noticed that the subcategory of aggravated assaults committed with a firearm wasn’t tabulated accurately, she said. “To his credit, he looks at hundreds of numbers everyday,” she said. “The Police Department isn’t exempt from technical glitches.”

And yet, there is a story in the newspaper about the whole situation, with what I think is a misleading headline. To me, the most interesting thing about this whole thing was the fact that there was an article at all. A telling statement:

The department could have decided to hold off submitting the data, but it might have appeared that police were trying to “cover up” the fact that violent crime surged dramatically in 2005, [the spokesperson] said. The department needed to meet a March deadline, she said.

There are several points I think we can take away from this article:

1. Information Quality is a high-visibility, political issue, even when handled correctly.
2. There is a quantifiable value in proactively and honestly addressing information quality issues.
3. Good organizations working together make dealing with information quality problems manageable.
4. Good people make all the difference in information quality.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 16th, 2006 at 7:37 am and is filed under Information Quality, In the News, People, Understanding. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.