The maintenance of information is a core government interest. The act of maintaining data to guarantee accuracy is essential to all facets of Australia’s government, from local offices to federal agencies.
Enhancing the Government’s Data Management Capabilities
If data management is to be successful, focus will need to be placed on the deployment of qualified personnel, the utilisation of sound methodologies, and the implementation of new technologies.
There are many actions government agencies can take to enhance data management as well as overcome the consequences of poor data quality.
1. Discover how the collected information will be utilised. What will you use the collected data for? Are new products and services surfacing that could potentially have a significant impact on your required data? For instance, do you only require address data or are you planning on expanding communications to other mediums like phone or email? Making the primary use of your data clear guarantees that you are gathering the right information from the start.
2. What’s missing? Study the information you already have to find what data may be missing. What concerns does your agency care most about? How do you transmit these concerns to your citizens? For instance, a local council can study its citizen’s payment history and service-use to make educated guesses about future choices. Blended with geodemographic data profiling and lifestyle, local councils can more efficiently create new services and enhance communication efforts with citizens.
3. What is the quality of your existing data? Study your current data to get a better understanding of how efficiently your existing processes are operating to gather and maintain accurate information. Do you have more than one entry for the same address or person? How many unfinished records exist in your system? Are the entries updated and verified often? Once the data has been studied for quality, it will be easier to discover where the process is failing.
4. If data is consistently degrading, deploy new processes. Processes need to be created and implemented to gather, clean, and manage information in a fail-proof and future-minded manner. Don’t just plan for today when creating these systems; think of how you may need to gather and use data in the future.
5. Put technology to work. Technology makes the giant task of data integrity verification, both at the entry point as well as the complete life of the data, much simpler. There are tools that standardise information input and verify its integrity at the entry point, tools for cleaning an in-place database by comparing address information with Australia Post’s Postal Address File, and even tools that categorise your database based on geodemographic information or lifestyle.
6. Study your progress to help guarantee that new technologies, policies, and procedures are delivering improvements and ROIs. It is important to study data quality performance and improvements on a indefinite basis. This will also provide you with the chance to discover areas that could use improvement or how new technological innovations may be able to further improve data quality.
Conclusion
One of the government’s core functions is to supply citizens with services in an efficient and affordable manner. These services can be anything from the protection of children’s welfare to the provision of recycling bins and other miscellaneous items to households. Without updated and accurate databases, governments will not be capable of fulfilling their main purpose and will be in danger of failing in important areas like risk management, fraud prevention, public safety, and guarantee citizen’s privacy. It is, therefore, essential that government data centres double their efforts to create and maintain efficient data management processes.