OCDQ Blog

Obsessive-compulsive data quality (OCDQ) affects millions of people worldwide.

The most common symptoms of OCDQ are:

• Obsessively verifying data used in critical business decisions
• Compulsively seeking an understanding of data in business terms
• Repeatedly checking that data is complete and accurate before sharing it
• Habitually attempting to calculate the cost of poor data quality
• Constantly muttering a mantra that data quality must be taken seriously

While the good folks at Prescott Pharmaceuticals are busy working on a treatment, I am dedicating this independent blog as group therapy to all those who (like me) have dealt with OCDQ their entire professional lives.

Over the years, the work of many individuals and organizations has been immensely helpful to those of us with OCDQ.

Some of these heroes deserve special recognition:

Data Quality Pro – Founded and maintained by Dylan Jones, Data Quality Pro is a free independent community resource dedicated to helping data quality professionals take their career or business to the next level. With the mission to create the most beneficial data quality resource that is freely available to members around the world, Data Quality Pro provides free software, job listings, advice, tutorials, news, views and forums. Their goal is "winning-by-sharing” and they believe that by contributing a small amount of their experience, skill or time to support other members then truly great things can be achieved. With the new Member Service Register, consultants, service providers and technology vendors can promote their services and include links to their websites and blogs.

International Association for Information and Data Quality (IAIDQ) – Chartered in January 2004, IAIDQ is a not-for-profit, vendor-neutral professional association whose purpose is to create a world-wide community of people who desire to reduce the high costs of low quality information and data by applying sound quality management principles to the processes that create, maintain and deliver data and information. IAIDQ was co-founded by Larry English and Tom Redman, who are two of the most respected and well-known thought and practice leaders in the field of information and data quality.IAIDQ also provides two excellent blogs: IQ Trainwrecks and Certified Information Quality Professional (CIQP).

Beth Breidenbach – her blog Confessions of a database geek is fantastic in and of itself, but she has also compiled an excellent list of data quality blogs and provides them via aggregated feeds in both Feedburner and Google Reader formats.

Vincent McBurney – his blog Tooling Around in the IBM InfoSphere is an entertaining and informative look at data integration in the IBM InfoSphere covering many IBM Information Server products such as DataStage, QualityStage and Information Analyzer.

Daragh O Brien – is a leading writer, presenter and researcher in the field of information quality management, with a particular interest in legal aspects of information quality. His blog The DOBlog is a popular and entertaining source of great material.

Steve Sarsfield – his blog Data Governance and Data Quality Insider covers the world of data integration, data governance, and data quality from the perspective of an industry insider. Also, check out his new book: The Data Governance Imperative.