Creating Reliable Information

It is important that people are able to trust the information they are using. Often they will be relying on it as the single source of truth against which decisions will be made. It is not difficult to imagine the risks to the interests of individuals and the organisation as a whole if the figures in a budget spreadsheet are wrong, an employee's home address on the staff database incorrect, or the plans given to a builder out-of-date.

Human error is not always to blame when unreliable information is created. Simple things such as the wrong date and time settings being applied within a system can instantly lead to inaccurate information being created with documents or database entries seemingly being created on the 1st January 1900. Likewise it is common to find all documents apparently being created by a single person, simply because they were responsible for creating the original template, or happened to install the software on the network.

Data Quality

Where human error is to blame there are often ways in which the risk of it occurring could be reduced. Designing a system where the administrator is expected to type in each member of staff's name as a free text field is almost certain to lead to spelling mistakes, duplicate entries and other inconsistencies. These would largely be eliminated if the administrator was forced to select each name from a pre-defined pick-list. The margin for error is reduced still further if that pick-list could be provided direct from the main personnel database.

Data Currency

Users need to know that the information they are relying on is as current and up-to-date as possible. There is nothing more off-putting to a user than finding that the information they are relying on was last updated two years ago and has been superseded many times since. Who is to be responsible for updating content, how frequently this must be performed and what the 'triggers' to doing it will all need defining.

As ever, fitness for purpose is what counts. For example, many institutions will perform a proactive annual check of the personal information they hold on their staff to ensure it is all current (whilst also reacting to any changes they are informed about throughout the year).

Status And Version Control

However frequently your information is updated it is important that users can be confident that they are looking at the most recent version. Also that they know whether or not it is still information in draft and liable to further change, or whether it has been finalised.

Some examples of simple but effective measures for ensuring that version control is ensured can be found in our Managing Information to Make Life Easier: A Guide for Administrators