Reliance on data suppliers requires trust on the
part of the data consumer and a proven track record
on the part of the supplier. Cultivating valuable
supplier partnerships is key. Yet collecting, aggregating,
manipulating, reporting or re-using another organization’s
data can entail risk: oftentimes the integrity of
data is suspect. Data may be incomplete, inaccurate
or inconsistent. So how can consumers of external
data keep tabs on the quality of data they bring in?
When we consider industries that rely heavily on external
sources of data, certain sectors come to mind, like
direct marketing and financial services. However,
a useful example of data supplier certification comes
not from the commercial world, but from the K-12 public
education system. In fact, the enormity of the education
system’s data feeds would cause most commercial
enterprises to balk. The U.S. Department of Education
is highly reliant on a vast system of data suppliers:
a nationwide network of states, which includes more
than 16,000 school districts and over 97,000 schools.
Each local entity reports student, teacher and school
data to its superior funding entity; that is, schools
report to districts and districts report to states,
with each state reporting to the federal government.
The stakes for producing good-quality data are high.
The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), which became
federal law in 2002, requires states to issue yearly
report cards on schools and school districts. Local
entities that receive federal funding must demonstrate
that they are meeting achievement goals, and can be
subject to sanctions if they don’t meet federal
benchmarks. In addition, pro-active data quality management
has started at the top. Galvanized by data-intensive
reporting for initiatives like NCLB, the U.S. Department
of Education has pushed the nation’s state education
agencies to apply high-tech solutions and local accountability
to the problem of data quality management. In doing
so, the education system is doing what so many private
sector IT managers wish they could do—push real
responsibility for the quality of data back into the
hands of their data suppliers—before the data
reaches consumers. And some in the education field
have begun to implement pioneering solutions to manage
the quality of data they take in from their suppliers.
Since 2001, Certica Solutions has worked closely with
state-level education agencies, helping them improve
the quality of the data that they collect from districts
and schools, and that the states, in turn, supply
to their federal regulators. Three states— Massachusetts,
Missouri and New Hampshire—have integrated Certica’s
inline data certification solution, Certify™,
into their data collection processes. As data arrives
from schools and districts, it passes through a series
of stringent validations, to ensure that data is not
corrupted, duplicated or out of compliance with pre-determined
rules. The collection process kicks off an automated
web service that performs a check of the data and
returns alerts and error reports to data suppliers.
Data suppliers can easily review their faulty data
online, record-by-record, and take corrective action
at the source of the problem—usually at the
school or district level.
This rapid cycle of automated data submission, validation,
error review and correction is improving the quality
and timeliness of data across the education spectrum.
The New Hampshire data submission system has evolved
to the point where automated validation cycles can
run hundreds of times per day, providing specific
information about errors to data suppliers.
Implementing an inline
data certification solution allows organizations,
whether in the public or private sector, to provide
an objective stamp of approval that data is of certified
high quality.
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