Category Archives: Reliance

April 25, 2016 · 4:19 pm

Sim City

One of the challenges of information governance in a corporation is dealing with the stupifying amount of information that gets accessed, generated, and received by the business and its employees and agents.  What if the challenge were to do that for an entire city?

“Singapore Is Taking the ‘Smart City’ to a Whole New Level,” The Wall Street Journal, April 25, 2016 R4. Singapore is a city-state that has more than 5.5 million residents.  It uses sensors and cameras to track residents, cars (and when and where they are used), construction, cleanliness of public spaces, smoking, littering, and wind-flow patterns.  Some information to be made available on a online platform.

What do you collect?  What do you use?  How do you protect it?

What can you learn from this?

Leave a comment

Filed under Access, Analytics, Business Case, Communications, Culture, Duty of Care, Governance, Investor relations, New Implications, Oversight, Privacy, Reliance, Security, Use

October 27, 2015 · 3:14 pm

Scary thoughts

Admiral Michael Rogers has an interesting view on information security.  He wonders when the bad guys will transition from just stealing information to changing the information.  The changes will cause even more disruption.

“It’s Only a Matter of Time,” The Wall Street Journal, October 27, 2015 R7.

What if someone chose to alter, rather than delete, your information?  How do you respond?

Leave a comment

Filed under Access, Board, Business Case, Governance, IT, Protect assets, Protect information assets, Reliance, Risk, Security

March 23, 2015 · 7:27 pm

Government statistics

Would the agency in charge of gathering data on the budget deficit “massage” the numbers to make the deficit look worse?

“Greeks Investigate Statistics Chief Over Deficit Figure,” Wall Street Journal, March 23, 2015 A8.  A prosecutor filed criminal charges alleging falsification of data (they don’t have 18 USC §1519 in Greece) against the head of the statistics agency.  Was the deficit 4% of GDP in 2009 or 15%?  More than a rounding error.

What happens if government numbers are a political football?  Who’s watching this?

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Business Case, Collect, Compliance, Compliance, Compliance, Compliance Verification, Data quality, Duty of Care, Governance, Management, Oversight, Oversight, Reliance, Risk, Use

Tagged as

October 17, 2014 · 9:40 am

The “st” metric

One form of information is metrics, or measures. But what do the metrics really measure, and are they being spun a bit?

“TV’s New Metrics,” Wall Street Journal, October 17, 2014 D1. Lots of data about the new TV shows, and how many and what people are watching them.  Which one has the most viewers? Between ages 18 and 49? Is that different from the biggest audience? Which is the funniest? Who has the highest score?  The most Twitter followers?

Common to the superlatives is a word with an “st” in it, e.g., most, biggest, funniest, highest.  Borrowing from Richard Levick‘s work on crisis management, on how communications capture eyeball share.  What information do you collect to which you can apply an “st” word to make your claim stand out? And how do you recognize the limitations on the “st” claim, when you are the reader?

How is all that information being used?

Leave a comment

Filed under Collect, Data quality, Management, Reliance, Use

October 11, 2014 · 2:26 pm

Minor error, major headache

0.05 of a rating point.  That’s all it was.

“Nielsen Says Glitch Affected Fall TV Ratings,” Wall Street Journal, October 11-12, 2014 B3. A small error introduced through a software update in March caused Nielsen to mis-report how many people watched certain TV shows at the start of the fall season.  Downstream impact on the millions of dollars of ad buys, the cost of which depends in part on the ratings as reported by Nielsen.

Are you in the information reporting business?  Nielsen certainly is.  Do you rely upon an information reporting business to accurately report information to you?  What if the information is wrong?

Leave a comment

Filed under Business Case, Collect, Controls, Data quality, Management, Protect, Reliance, Risk, Third parties, Use, Value