Data Management For Improved Government Services

Information is at the core of government activities. Managing data and ensuring it is as accurate and up to date as possible is critical for all levels of government in Australia, from local councils to state or federal departments.

Governments collect a wide range of personal information for a variety of reasons. Voting information, tax information, vehicle registration, criminal records, residency information, child safety -the list goes on and on.

Call centres, letters, email, face to face, citizens interact with government via multiple channels. The rise of e-government has also seen a massive increase in data collected via the internet.

According to Experian QAS government research "Almost 95% consider data quality to be a 'priority' or 'important' - but less than 60% have a data quality strategy in place."

However it is captured, the data government departments' possess is vital and the consequences of 'getting data management wrong' are both wide spread and severe.

1. PUBLIC SAFETY AND RISK MANAGEMENT

Imagine if a social worker arrived at a home to check on the welfare of minors in response to a report of abuse - and the address was wrong. Not only would this be embarrassing for the government department, it could also jeopardise the safety of the young people involved. This is just one of numerous scenarios where public safety could be at risk due to insufficient or incorrect data held by government departments.

There are multiple acts and guidelines pertaining to the mitigation of risk through personal information. For example, legislation relating to background checks on employees working with children, criminal records legislation including the National Offenders Register, public housing records, and elder care records. Even emergency services can be affected by improperly collected or maintained government records.

There are multiple acts and guidelines - from the National Privacy Act to state and local based guidelines on personal information and data quality, as well as legislation pertaining to the mitigation of risk through personal information.

2. REPORTING AND COMPLIANCE LEGISLATION

The introduction of increased levels of compliance and reporting place a greater onus on businesses, and government departments, to ensure they are regularly updating and maintaining accurate information within their databases.

For example, the Federal Government introduced privacy protection legislation in 2001 which proscribes that organisations have an obligation to uphold individual's rights to privacy by regulating the collection, usage and disclosure of personal information. Centralising all of the information a department holds about an individual and ensuring its accuracy is imperative to ensure compliance.

Health Data Management

Effective health data management is necessary to have current information on every aspect of health care activities. Health data management is required in hospitals, clinics and other health institutions. These institutions have to manage and store large amounts of data, set up systems that can access and retrieve needed data quickly, and have the capability to analyze that medical data to find new ways to help ailing patients.

Health data management systems are the perfect solution for managing health data. These software systems enable to streamline patient data management by putting together data from patients, medical devices and other data sources to provide significant and timely information. Many of these advanced systems allow flexibility in design and application. Efficient health data management ensures immediate access to data so that in an emergency situation, you will be able to interpret the data quickly and easily. Data accuracy is also ensured. Moreover, health information can be entered any time from any location. Advantages of these new technology devices are automated data collection, error-free tracking and analysis of device-generated clinical data measurements. Patient information is easily recorded and transmitted and you are kept up-to-date on all relevant details.

Health data management can be entrusted to companies that provide data management and analytic services to large employers, coalitions, insurers and other payers and risk-bearing provider groups with the help of their team of highly skilled consultants and analysts. They capture and translate healthcare datasets from virtually any IT system and integrate these transaction records into useable databases to help sound decision making.

Health data management services are available either as a complete outsourcing solution of data analytics services or as onetime assistance. These services comprise the preparation and cleansing of data, analysis and reporting of results, decision making support and assistance in implementing solutions.

The 3M health data management system is a PC-based system which has innovative data collection and reporting modules. The Healthengage is a health data management service, which supports data management from a variety of different devices.

The Strategic Importance of Asset Management

As a result of a handful of events, 2003 has been a benchmark year in the discipline of asset management, the implications of which are reverberating around the world. All of these events were, in some manner, due to a failure of physical assets.

* The Colombia Space Shuttle disaster

* The New York blackout, the London blackout, and the blackout in Italy

* Six people, responsible for the management and maintenance of the rail lines, were charged with manslaughter regarding the Hatfield train disaster in the United Kingdom


The global reaction to these events has been the culmination of a continuous series of changes in this area since the early 1970s. These changes have encompassed attitudes within society, heightened levels of understanding as well as the competitive market forces acting on the function of physical asset management.


This is Part One of three-part note.

Part Two discusses the implications for asset management.

Part Three presents a new framework for asset management.

Changing Attitudes

Society has become increasingly intolerant of industrial incidents, particularly in the areas of safety and environmental integrity. It is no longer considered acceptable to cause harm to either the environment or to people and the communities that they live in.

In the past ten years this has been reflected in various changes in legislation and regulation in countries around the world. Some of the recent developments in these areas include:

* Changes to the regulations governing electricity providers in the United Kingdom—now providing a high degree of focus on risk management and mitigation.

* Wide ranging fraud legislation by the federal government of Canada in response to the Westray disaster

* Legislation in response to the Longford disaster in Australia

It is becoming obvious that in the future those responsible for the management of physical assets will be more likely to be called to account when there is a failure, and as can be seen by recent history, it is likely that it will not be companies but individuals.

In extreme cases incidents can also mean irreversible damage to a company's public image. Think of such disasters as the Exxon-Valdez environmental incident, the Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal in India or more recently the linking of Powergen to the New York blackout. All of these incidents have remained chained to these companies in the public mind.

Difference Between Document Management and Digital Asset Management

Everywhere you look within organizations, there is content. All this content needs to be managed. At first it was static information, and documents published on the Internet needed management solutions. As a result document management (DM) emerged as the mechanism or process to create, capture, manage, store, and deliver these documents to the right departments and individuals.

Digital Assets

Today, electronic media is more then just on-line text. Organizations are using images, video, and audio files and other digital formats within organizations that need to be managed as well. Digital assets are often time consuming to create, but they are valuable to organizations because digital assets attract the attention of clients, whether internal or external to the organization.

Digital assets require a format and management process that enables re-use. When looking for a solution, one question that faces organizations is whether a DM system is capable of supporting their needs or if a digital asset management (DAM) solution it more appropriate.

To determine this answer, an organization must understand the difference between the two solutions. This is a difficult task because there is confusion in the market between DM and DAM solutions. This article will investigate what is unique to a DAM solution and why organizations need a DAM to manage other types of data instead of just text documents.

Document Management

Organizations use document management to assist with the management, creation, workflow, and the storage of documents within different departments. A DM solution uses databases for storage, and workflow engines to design and support workflows, including business rules and metadata.

Document management systems are often used in industries where there are high volumes of documents, such as in the insurance, health care and government industries. Increasingly DM solutions are evolving into Web content management (CM) systems.

Digital Asset Management

Digital asset management (DAM) solutions are also referred to as media asset management (MAM), entertainment media asset management (EMAM), brand resource management (BRM), marketing content management (MCM), and asset management (AM). DAM focuses on organizations specifically with digital assets, such as the entertainment or advertising industry, and is used in situations where asset reproduction is important. Often organizations combine a DAM solution with a CM solution to maintain their web site. Consequently, DAM and CM vendors acquire one or the other to combine their solutions into an integrated solution.

Flexible Customer Data Integration Solution Adapts to Your Business Needs

Customer data integration (CDI) has become one of the buzzwords within the master data management (MDM) industry. Although the concept of creating a single organizational view of the customer is noble and desirable, its value should also be justified by organizations. To implement a customer data hub that only creates a centralized view of an organization's customer-related data does not affect a company's bottom line, unless business units have bought into the initiative and tie it to the organization's strategy. Customer turnover, collections, call centers, and marketing initiatives can be monitored, consolidated, and improved through CDI. However, to ensure successful CDI implementations, solutions should be driven and managed by the business units to ensure buy-in, and to increase the value associated with customer-related data.

In addition to the collaboration and buy-in needed to ensure a successful project, the type of CDI initiative and the architectural style chosen to implement it play important roles in the use and view of customer data. CDI hubs are used differently depending on the way they deliver information to users. It becomes important to choose a style compatible with the organization's current business needs, with the knowledge that these needs will change over time, and that as a result, the CDI architecture may change as well.

An Overview of Siperian's Product Offerings

Siperian is a leading San Mateo, California (US)-based CDI vendor for the health and life sciences industry. The vendor's solutions allow customers to create, consolidate, and present a single view of customer-related data based on their organizations' needs and maturity within their CDI or MDM environments. Siperian's product offerings reflect the business needs of organizations, and provide businesses with the ability to reduce operational costs and improve compliance when implemented in alignment with the organizations' business processes. This occurs through the management of customer-related data by creating a singular view of the customer across the organization, and by providing the appropriate views of that data to business units across the organization, based on their needs.

CDI hubs enable organizations to develop centralized customer data management structures, and to contribute to the ongoing data quality activities required to ensure successful CDI initiatives. Different hub styles, coupled with vendor product offerings, provide organizations with the ability to build and structure their customer information to enhance the customer experience, and to supply employees with the right information when they need it.

Siperian offers three products with differing architectural styles, namely Master Identity, Master Data Management, and Operational Views, to meet the varied requirements of an organization's customers based on the maturity of its CDI environment. These styles provide organizations with different benefits based on the way these organizations choose to apply CDI. Organizations may want a total approach to CDI immediately; that is, to manage their organization-wide CDI and MDM initiatives from the start. However, the implementation of a CDI initiative in stages provides organizations with stronger frameworks to develop and maintain their CDI environments and data quality initiatives over time.