The Poor Data Quality Jar

Today I am pondering whether or not the venerable tradition of The Swear Jar could be adapted to help organizations illustrate the costs of poor data quality.

As an example for those unfamiliar with the concept, my family used a swear jar when I was growing up.  Anytime a family member swore (i.e., used profanity), they put an amount of money into the jar based on the severity of the swear.

Of course in my family, what exactly constituted “profanity” as well as what the severity of a particular swear should be would often cause considerable debate, which somewhat ironically lead to the increased use of unquestionable profanity.

Therefore, The Swear Jar was far from a perfect system (at least for my family). 

But I am still imaging every organization instituting The Poor Data Quality Jar.

When an employee contributes to the organization's poor data quality, they put an amount of money into the jar based on the severity of the data quality issue, and perhaps with an increasing scale to be more punitive to repeat offenders.

Do you think The Poor Data Quality Jar can help your organization?  If so, how much would you charge for different types of data quality issues?  How would you determine the severity (i.e., financial impact) of each data quality issue?

Photo via Flickr (Creative Commons License) by: Karen Roe