MIS203-02_Sem-202 Class Tutorial

Managing Data Resources

Setting up a database is only a start. In order to make sure that the data for your business remain accurate, reliable, and readily available to those who need them, your business will need special policies and procedures for data management.

Establishing an Information Policy

Every business, large and small, needs an information policy. It need to have rules on how the data are to be organized and maintained, and who is allowed to view the data or change them. An information policy specifies the organizations rules for sharing, disseminating, acquiring, standardizing, classifying, and inventorying information. Information policy lays out specific procedures and accountabilities, identifying which users and organizational units can share information, where information can be distributed, and who is responsible for updating and maintaining the information.

In a large organization, managing and planning for information as a corporate resource often requires a formal data administration function. Data administrationis responsible for the specific policies and procedures through which data can be managed as an organizational resource. These responsibilities include developing information policy, planning for data, overseeing logical database design and data dictionary development, and monitoring how information systems specialists and end-user groups use data.

A large organization will also have a database design and management group within the corporate information systems division that is responsible for defining and organizing the structure and content of the database, and maintaining the database. In close cooperation with users, the design group establishes the physical database, the logical relations among elements, and the access rules and security procedures. The functions it performs are called database administration.

Ensuring Data Quality

A well-designed database and information policy will go a long way toward ensuring that the business has the information it needs. However, additional steps must be taken to ensure that the data in organizational databases are accurate and remain reliable.

Data that are inaccurate, untimely, or inconsistent with other sources of information create serious operational and financial problems for businesses. Some data quality problems are caused by redundant and inconsistent data produced by multiple systems. For example, a firm's ordering system might use the term Item Number and the inventory system might call the same attribute Product Number. Most data quality problems, however, such as misspelled names or incorrect codes, stem from errors during data input.

If a database is properly designed and enterprise-wide data standards established, duplicate or inconsistent data elements should be minimal. Most data quality problems, however, such as misspelled names, transposed numbers, or incorrect or missing codes, stem from errors during data input. The incidence of such errors is rising as companies move their businesses to the Web and allow customers and suppliers to enter data into their Web sites that directly update internal systems.

Before a new database is in place, organizations need to identify and correct their faulty data and establish better routines for editing data once their database is in operation. Analysis of data quality often begins with a data quality audit, which is a structured survey of the accuracy and level of completeness of the data in an information system. Data quality audits can be performed by surveying entire data files, surveying samples from data files, or surveying end users for their perceptions of data quality.

Data cleansing, also known as data scrubbing, consists of activities for detecting and correcting data in a database that are incorrect, incomplete, improperly formatted, or redundant. Data cleansing not only corrects data but also enforces consistency among different sets of data that originated in separate information systems. Specialized data-cleansing software is available to automatically survey data files, correct errors in the data, and integrate the data in a consistent company-wide format.

1. What an organization must do before putting a new database in place?

2. Why it's needed to perform Data Scrubbing?

3. Which function is responsible for specific policies and procedures through which data can be managed?

4. What are included in these responsibilities?