Past Meeting - February 26, 2004
Learn about Making Data Management Relevant to the Enterprise
Thursday, March 18, 2004
6:30 P.M. - 8:00 P.M.Summary
Michael Scofield's 5-tier model of IT started with hardware at the bottom, and progressed to operating systems, applications, data, and decision making. He glossed over the lower layers -- we all know them so well, and they're essentially irrelevant compared to the importance of data and decision making to an enterprise. Michael made several great points about the relevance of clean data, the difficulties of merging data from disparate sources, and the value of outlier analysis. Some pretty funny moments came when we realized the implications of scores of people with the same social security number, and there being actually more than two sexes.
Michael's perspectives on helping top level executives understand the importance and value of data were especially useful. The short message: the enterprise *is* its data ... and large enterprises can move no faster nor more flexibly than its data can.
Abstract
Information technology exists to serve the Enterprise, yet the gap between IT and the business seems to be widening: applications take longer to develop, IT gets more complex and fragmented, and executive frustration grows. Frustrated executives sometimes make irrational decisions about IT, including outsourcing or "off-shoring". All technologists need to periodically evaluate their relation to the business to be sure that the role they play is intimately connected to the business.
Mr. Scofield will review a 5-tier model of IT, and talk about the political and psychological implications of the model. He will focus on data as the primary IT asset, including data warehousing and business intelligence rationales and techniques. He will also discuss major reasons businesses succeed or fail in managing or capitalizing on their data, including major technical, strategic, and political issues.
Presenter Bio
Michael Scofield is a popular speaker and author with expertise in data architecture, data warehousing, and data quality. He is Assistant Professor, Health Information Management at Loma Linda University in southern California. Before this, he was Director of Data Quality for Experian (formerly TRW Credit Data) in Orange, California. Prior to that, he was Vice President and Manager of Information Quality for Home Savings of America (Los Angeles). He is keenly interested in data quality assessment, and reverse engineering and mining of production databases.
His articles on data architecture and data quality techniques have been published in Information Week, IBI System Journal, Data Management Review, and the Database Newsletter. His speaking engagements include DAMA-International conferences, Meta-data Conferences in London and the U.S., various DAMA chapters, DB2 user groups, and The Data Warehousing Institute. He also writes humor, published in the Los Angeles Times and other journals.
