I was going to write a second part to my ‘the data of death’ blog but that will have to wait for another time. Instead I want to focus on two specific events that have happened in the last couple days.

Over the past several nights I’ve been staying up waaaaay to late watching the Olympics. I’m a sucker for track and field events and am always captivated at the back stories they have about the athletes. But the truly incredible part is watching those elite athletes compete. Four, eight or sometimes even 12 or more years of training can come down to just seconds of competition. In one particular event, the margin of difference between gold and silver was a mere 0.001 of a second.

In the midst of the Olympics, another amazing event was the successful landing of the Mars rover Curiosity. After an eight month journey, it all came down to a complex series of events during a seven minute window that NASA admitted they had no control over from mission control. That series of events included slowing from 13,000 mph, entering the Mars atmosphere, enduring temperatures over 3,800 degrees F, dropping the heat shield, deploying the parachute, deploying the sky crane from the capsule, firing retrorockets to slow the craft to 2 mph, free Curiosity from the sky crane on support cables, release Curiosity’s wheels, touch down at less than 2 mph, release the support cables, have the capsule fly out of range to land and then have Curiosity begin initial post-landing check procedures.

Meanwhile, here on the ‘3rd rock from the sun’ approximately 352 million miles from Mars and several thousand miles from the Olympic stadium in East London (depending on where you are sitting when reading this), we as data professionals go about what we do far from the spotlight, many times even seemingly invisible to the client or project team we are working with. Although the data profession is finally getting some recognition, it is still far from a streamline IT job in most agencies.

But all of these events are tied together by the ‘teams behind the glory’.

Michael Phelps may be the greatest Olympic athlete of all times but rest assured he did not earn that title by himself. Bob Bowman, his coach, and a long list of supporting names developed his natural talents into the athlete we have see over and over again on the highest podium over the last several Olympics.

Over the next two years the Curiosity will roam around the surface of Mars, processing thousands of soil samples and sending back some jaw-dropping photos but NASA can’t take all the credit. The companies that built the parts that became the rover can be equally proud of their accomplishments.

As data professionals most of our work is as part of the team behind the glory. A data modeler will seldom, if ever, get the accolades for a business system installed and functioning properly, but without a good model to build the database from, the system might never function properly. We don’t usually decide what technology product the agency will utilize for a specific function, but without good ETL and quality check routines, that legacy system replacement could result in an inability to find a single complete record in the new system. We may not always be first on people’s minds when things are working properly, but they know who to contact when things aren’t working properly.

We are one of many supporting teams in information technology. The things we do every day may sometimes seem ‘mundane’ or ‘routine’ to us and not always seen as being very important in the grand scheme of things. But remember that Michael Phelps swam hundreds of laps a day under the watchful eye of his coach to prepare for every competition. The coach didn’t swim with him. The coach instructed on the fundamentals. He ensured the basics were understood and the techniques were right. Then he stood on the side and celebrated when all of that instruction and technique was put to the proper use.

Rest assured that our work is neither mundane or routine. Our work is essential to the performance of the team that is information technology and the ultimate winners – those that benefit from all we do behind the scenes.

As you watch the Olympics or marvel at the results coming back from ‘the Red Planet’, raise a glass and toast all of those behind the scenes that make the winners what they are.  Here’s to you!

On Sunday, July 7^th, two men that I knew died.

The first was Ernest Borgnine.  Growing up I knew Ernest as the star of the sitcom McHale’s Navy or as I sometimes referred to it in my youth: “Gomer Pyle with boats”. In my college years, he was etched into my memory for the role of ‘Cabbie’ in the 1981 cult classic “Escape from New York’. Kids today are more likely to know him as the voice of ‘Mermaid Man’ in Sponge Bob Square Pants cartoons. The last role I recall seeing him in was the Bruce Willis movie, ‘Red’ where he played the ‘records keeper’. I recall the scene when the records vault opened and the camera panned in. There was Ernest sitting behind the desk. It made me smile as I hadn’t seen him in anything for many years and thought he fit the role perfectly. Ernest appeared in over 200 films and TV shows during his career.

The other man that died, I knew more closely. It was one of my neighbors, Robert. Robert and I weren’t close friends. We were more the ‘wave at each other when getting home from work’ friends or the ‘stopping to have a quick chat about the weather when mowing the yard’ friends. Robert was a pillar of the community, deeply involved in his church and the local jail ministry, and a loving and devoted husband, father and grandfather.

Robert likely had no idea when he awoke on Sunday, ate breakfast and then showered before dressing for church that it would be his last morning. We are told he never felt a thing when he exited the shower and was most likely dead before he made contact with the floor.

Death for Americans is the ultimate taboo subject. No one likes to consider the possibility that any moment on this earth may be their last. There are plenty of songs that remind us we should live like we were dying and that we should live every moment to the fullest. But how do you do that when you are working eight (or more) hours a day five (or more) days a week?

According to the Centers for Disease Control, the final 2009 U.S. death statistics show that there were 2,437,163 deaths with a death rate of 793.8 deaths per 100,000 of population. The average life expectancy was 78.5 years (Robert fell short by 18.5 years). The number one cause of death, 599,413, was heart disease. Cancer followed as a close second.

Answers.com states that 55% of Americans do not have a will, dropping to only 32% for African-Americans. For Robert’s family’s sake, I hope that is not the case.

The average cost of a funeral is now over $6,000 yet the average family has less than $4,000 in savings. While funeral homes do their best to work within the limits set by families, there are a large number of irrevocable decisions that need to be made in a very short period of time and many of those decisions come with a price tag attached. To offset this issue, funeral homes are now offering ‘prepayment plans’ that cover everything from the style of casket to the flowers and musical selections.

Ernest had fans around the world. At 95 he had led what many call a ‘full life’. Robert’s influence was undoubtedly smaller but I also have no doubt that the lives he touched were forever changed just by knowing him.

This blog is not an effort to immortalize either gentleman.  For me, they serve as reminders that on one hand, an entire generation of Hollywood stars that I grew up with seems to be passing away at a faster and faster rate. On the other, I’m reminded that I have crossed over the 50 yard line of life and that more and more I need to spend what time I have left doing the things I enjoy… and a little time planning for the inevitable.  After all, none of us really knows what second will be our last…. Do we?

If you are a parent, you know that there are a number of conversations that many parents fear having with their child or children:

1)      Santa, Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, etc

2)      The ‘birds and the bees’ when young

3)      ‘Don’t do drugs’

4)      The ‘sex talk’ when teenagers

In fact, some or all of these might raise such a bead of sweat on the foreheads of some parents that they prefer to never have ‘the talk’ and rely on the kindness of others or the (mis)information provided by their children’s friends as the source of knowledge. (On the other end of the spectrum there are also parents that realize that some of these are not a ‘one-time’ discussion and should be part of on-going conversations with their children.)

In this day and age I believe there is another talk that parent’s need to have with their children. It’s the ‘data’ talk. The problem may be that many parents feel so far behind the technology curve compared to their kids that they are afraid that the kids may ask a question or raise a point that the parents may not know the answer to or have a legitimate rationale to support.

When our daughter could still count her age on one hand, she was already totally familiar with my mantra, “It’s all about the data”. Unfortunately, she didn’t always understand what it meant! Some of her first experiences on-line resulted in her shouting excitedly that she was the millionth visitor to a website and had just won a great prize (if she’d just give them her name and address so they would know where to send it). At that point we sat her down and tried to explain the concept of advertisers, and hackers, that wanted to get her information so they could sell it to others or put a little file on the computer so they could track everything that she or we did on the computer – not necessarily just which computer sites we were going to. Of course that was way too much for her mind to comprehend so it got boiled down to “don’t click on any of those things that pop-up while you are online and *never* put in your name unless you show it to us first.

Years later, when she wanted to create a FaceBook account, we realized that it was time to have a refresher on the ‘talk’.

The talk wasn’t an attempt to scare her into not having an account. Instead we tried to explain to her why it might not be the smartest idea to have her account wide open to any/everyone in the world and the sort of things that she should never post – ever. Of course she had the innocent mindset of a young teenager finding it hard to believe that anyone would: 1) find or focus on her account amongst the millions of others and 2) have any reason to do her personal harm.  Fortunately for us, over the next several days a number of news articles highlighted many of the same arguments that we had made or showed how bad things had happened to unsuspecting people that had taken a similar ‘devil may care’ attitude.

At this point I’d like to praise my daughter’s ability to not only humor her parents for sitting her down for such a chat but also for her ability to rationally process what we were saying and see the logic of doing what we were telling her. As a result of placing a few restrictions on her account, she hasn’t lost any friends but we feel safer knowing that her personal life isn’t on display to the entire world.

As she prepares to head into the ‘real world’, we have a sense of comfort in knowing she’s a little wiser and perhaps a little better prepared for the realities that will come her way.

If your child is old enough to turn on a computer or get to the internet on your tablet or smart phone, I highly recommend that you take the time to have the ‘data talk’ with them. It’s much easier than the other four talks you have in your future.

It’s been a couple months now since the entertainment industry finished up their awards season and as usual there were a slew of movies nominated that I have never seen or even heard of (sadly the ratio of “unknowns” to “knowns” increases proportionally with my age). This doesn’t bother me too much though because the entertainment industry isn’t the awards announcements I watch the closest. I have an interest in something much closer to my heart – the state IT awards.

State IT programs are usually not on the bleeding edge but the implications of what they provide for large sections of the citizen base and that the work is accomplished given the staggering budget cuts seen across all states make the work that is completed that much more impressive.

There are a variety of awards sponsored by a number of different organizations that compare state to state and also competitions internal within the states as well.

While there is no guaranteed salary increase for a state IT winner like an Oscar gives, there are considerable bragging rights for finishing first or at least near the top.  From a citizen perspective the transparency award might be one of the most important.  The U.S. PIRG (Public Interest Research Groups) ‘Follow the Money’ report (http://www.uspirg.org/reports/usp/following-money-2012) The 2012 report is the “third annual ranking of states’ progress toward “Transparency 2.0” – a new standard of comprehensive, one-stop, one-click budget accountability and accessibility.”  This report is important because citizens of a state need to have a level of confidence that the state is utilizing their tax dollars as efficiently and effectively as possible.  That’s not possible if you can’t get to the data to search and see how much is being spent on what from whom.

Internally, state IT organizations may be more interested in the ‘Best of the Web’ award sponsored by the Center for Digital Government. This award compares the offering, content, ease of use, functionality and other criteria of all 50 states and then ranks the top 10. Naturally every state wants to rank in the top 10 and the competition gets tougher every year as states offer more and more services on line.  The 2012 results are not due until September but the results for the last 10 years can be found here – http://www.centerdigitalgov.com/survey/88/2011. The CDG has a similar awards program for both cities (by various size categories) and also county governments.

The CDG also sponsors another highly competed for award – the Digital States Surveys. The digital states survey goes beyond just the state website and is a “comprehensive study that examines best practices, policies and progress made by state governments in their use of digital technologies to better serve their citizens and streamline operations.” The award is biannual in even numbered years and traditionally ranked the states from #1 to 50 but in 2010 switched to a new format of given a letter grade. This is a somewhat kinder format that appears to take away bragging rights for being ‘Top Dog’ but there are still 1^st to 5^th rankings in eight separate subcategories.

For internal system to system competitions, Digital Government magazine sponsors ‘Best of’ events and awards in many states. The awards themselves may vary state to state but state agencies compete fiercely for recognition for the projects they have completed during the previous year.

While these government awards may not be as flashy or draw the attention of the print and news media, be assured that your state and/or their IT department finds them worth the time to compete for. I suggest you check the reports listed above to see where your state ranks nationally in Information Technology.

With the passing of Super Bowl XLVI into the record books (Congratulations to the New York Giants in their win over the New England Patriots, 21-17) and discussions about the ads limited since most have been leaked on the web over the past few weeks, we enter a period of seemingly endless duration for those self-made human sports data machines; the fantasy football league participants. You know the individuals of whom I speak. They gather every couple of days to discuss their fantasy team and the incredible play of the running back, the passing statistics of their unequaled quarterback and how they would have had the top team in the league if their star wide receiver had not let *that* pass slip through his usual ‘catch anything’ fingers.  These are the individuals that can sometimes sit within a meeting unable to comprehend the need for gathering certain numbers at the organizational level to verify the validity of some initiative but can spew forth an endless stream of stats on every professional football player over the course of the last five to ten years.

These poor individuals now face the dreaded February sports data wasteland seemingly much larger than that endured by Mad Max beyond Aunty Entity’s Thunderdome. A small flicker of hope keeps them going when they glance at the calendar and count and recount the remaining days of the month. The NCAA men’s basketball March Madness bracket floats out there just beyond their reach.

To fill the long weeks until the near gladiatorial elimination process of college hoops, these sports data junkies will search the farthest reaches of the internet looking for some data elements worthy of storage within their episodic or emotional long-term memory for discussion with their pack of peers. I offer here some possible solutions to their sports data quandary.

There are those that will semi-reluctantly move to fantasy play in the NBA but this season’s lockout and declining interest will have many looking for something more interesting to do with their time. Besides, with the top players earning more than $10 million in salary alone, most data crunchers may choose to watch their unpaid college brethren fight their way into the bracket. Who doesn’t like a good underdog story like the Murray State University Racers remaining the only undefeated team (23-0, 11-0 in the Ohio Valley Conference)?

Major League Baseball will no doubt also see an uptick in the number of fantasy players. The season is young enough to make up any ground lost by starting late. Others will gravitate to NASCAR for their data excitement.

On polar opposite ends of the sports universe, there is fantasy hockey and fantasy golf. (Congratulations to team Ryan Ballengee at the top of the golf leaderboard with winnings as of this posting of $2,249,381.)

Although I could not find a fantasy league for curling, the USCA is sponsoring a raffle of assorted sports memorabilia that will be drawn the end of February, so you may want to check that out as a possible point of interest. There’s also a World Wrestling Entertainment fantasy league – but many might say that’s a bit of an oxymoron…

Whatever sport they decide to support to fill their lonely hours, I hope you, as their co-worker, will be understanding in their coming weeks of need.

For much of the world, January represents the time when last year’s performance evaluations are completed and this year’s performance plans are drafted and communicated. I’m sure there was a certain percentage of the readership that shuddered at that sentence but if you are a true manager at heart, this is a wonderful time of the year! If you are a data specialist that functions as a manager under the category of ‘other duties as assigned’, bear with me, there’s stuff here for you too! If you are an employee with no knowledge if your coming evaluation will be good or bad, you definitely want to pay attention.

For the true manager there is no time that should be more important and exciting than the time you get to talk with your staff about what they did over the last year and what you expect them to do for the coming year. One of the worst things you can do is toss a completed form in their general direction as you walk by and ask them to sign it and have it back on your desk before you return. Even worse is forgetting to do evaluations altogether, or asking staff to do their own because you simply don’t have the time. Many managers fear what their employees will say when they see their evaluations. If any evaluation comes as a surprise to an employee, you haven’t done a very good job as their manager.

If you consider your employees to be underachieving, perhaps they are not the problem. Perhaps they don’t have a sufficient understanding of what they are supposed to do to properly perform their job.  Perhaps their job duties haven’t been sufficiently documented and communicated. Perhaps you are expecting them to read your mind to know what you expect for them to meet, or even exceed, your expectations.

For those of you whose first love will always be data – don’t think of this as a series of potentially grueling meetings with your staff to get though as quickly as possible. Instead, think of it as an opportunity to crunch all of the data on each employee’s performance over the past year and compare it to their expected performance. How else can you tell them how they did? How else can you say if they deserve a promotion or a demotion? How else can you fairly evaluate them? What’s that you say… You don’t have either the data or the expectations? In that case, don’t let another year go by without properly planning now for next year.

Job duties should be clearly defined, specific to the job title/classification, measureable, achievable, agreeable and clearly explained at the beginning of the evaluation period. In addition, any changes in job function during the evaluation period should be fully documented with appropriate additional or new job duties added and old duties lined through or deleted.

Performance should be periodically reviewed during the overall evaluation period so you can provide your version of a status report to your employees on how they are doing. Ask them for input on how they think they did and the accomplishments they feel are worthy of being recorded as part of the documentation that will be used to support the final year end rating/ranking.

If your team members have repeatable tasks as their primary functions, start recording their individual results on a regular basis (weekly/monthly/quarterly) so you can see how they do against the overall team average. Of course you have to take into account such things as the number of hours/days/weeks the tasks are performed for some staff versus others to be sure to be comparing ‘apples to apples’.

For those with more cerebral duties, it may be harder to put a quantitative number on everything they do. Perhaps shifting to a qualitative analysis in those cases will help. How well do they perform the work they do? If their function is to draft documents, how many errors are there, how many times do they hit their deadlines or how often do they misrepresent their understanding of the topic?

Another thing to watch out for is the halo effect – where a personal favorite always scores on the far end of the scale, regardless of whether their performance actually warrants such a score or not. In such cases there is usually an individual on the other end of the spectrum being marked down because of a personal bias against them.

Organizational policy and best practice should help you assure that you are at least meeting the minimum requirements in terms of evaluating your team but why settle for the minimum? If you are at all unsure of what is required of you as a supervisor, contact your HR department and ask them for a refresher.

Regardless of why you are in the role, remember that you have an obligation, so do the best you can for your people and they will in turn do their best for you!

BOOK REVIEW

1001 Ways to Reward Employees by Bob Nelson

With everyone focused on the holidays and the giving of gifts, I felt this was the perfect time to post a review of this wonderful book that’s been a mainstay of my work library for years. You don’t have to have a title or a position to be one of the true leaders of your business unit. As such, you should recognize the need to reward those you work with.

It has been stated time and again in survey after survey of employees that the one thing they wish for  - is recognition of a job well done. This supports Frederick Herzberg’s research. Praise doesn’t cost a dime but that doesn’t mean it should be cheap. Be honest with your praise and make it as specific as possible. A comment such as, “Bill, great job on that thing last week,” as you walk by on your way to a meeting comes off sounding extremely hollow and will likely hurt your credibility more than it will help morale.

Bob Nelson has put together a wide variety of ideas on how to reward those people that make you look good day in and day out. Originally released as part of the “1001 Ways to…” series back in 1994, this book is as essential today as it was back then. The book is broken down into headings covering both informal and formal rewards, as well as awards for specific achievements and activities. For most supervisors and managers with no budget for rewards and no deep personal pockets, the informal rewards section is the ‘go to’ area.

This section of the book covers such areas as no-cost, low-cost, communication, social rewards, fun celebrations and public recognition. Each of these sections is chock full of ideas of every shape and size to fit the diversity of your workforce. Always remember that what works for one person may not work for the next, so you still need to know your staff regardless of the method you plan to use. Planning a public recognition event for an introvert may not turn out the way you had hoped.

One idea that I have personally used with success is the use of candy as rewards. When an employee has done a specific job above and beyond, I’ve gone in and said “I wish I could offer you a raise for the great job you did on the (fill in the blank) but how about an extra PAYDAY instead.” It never fails to get a chuckle and it is appreciated. Similarly, a bag of LIFESAVERS goes a long way toward thanking someone for ‘saving the day’ by averting a crisis or resolving it quickly after it is identified. (Obviously offering a PAYDAY to someone with a peanut allergy also wouldn’t provide the desired result.)

This is also the perfect time of year to consider treating your staff or team to lunch or provide them with a small token of appreciation for the job they do every day. If the numbers are large, ask the next level of management if they would assist with the cost or suggest a pot-luck. This distributes the cost but still allows the employees to be gathered together to hear honest words of praise and appreciation from management.

If you are at a loss for creative ways to reward your employees or simply want to consider expanding your possible options, this could be the book for you. It is available at many public libraries or used copies can be purchased online for as little as $1.00. At any price, this is definitely a work present you should consider buying for yourself.

Ask most people the first thing that comes to mind when you say “November” and they will say “Thanksgiving” (although some food network viewers might say “Turkey’).

Travel back in time with me a few hundred years and imagine how differently things might have been if the planning for the voyages of the Mayflower had employed a project manager.

“Our SCHEDULE shows that we will be arriving in the New World in early fall and I want everyone to be aware that I think this greatly increases our RISK of success. There are a number of scenarios that could result in delays, thereby postponing our arrival until mid-winter. I’d like to propose a CHANGE CONTROL that would have us arriving in late spring. The weather will be much more tolerable, food stores won’t have to last as long and the likelihood of losing half of the PROJECT TEAM to weather and disease drops significantly. Merchant Adventurers, as the project SPONSORS, I’ll need you to sign this change request. After that I’ll COMMUNICATE the change to all of the STAKEHOLDERS, including John Robinson, William Brewster, William Bradford, and Myles Standish. Thanks for all of your cooperation. We’ll reestablish the PLANNING team in about 4 months.”

As with most projects, things back then didn’t exactly go according to the plan. The Mayflower did experience several unplanned delays and instead of finding their intended goal at the mouth of the Hudson River, they landed some two hundred plus miles East on the Massachusetts coast in mid-November and the rest, as they say, is history.

When you look back upon your own repertoire of projects, I’m sure there are many things that knowing what you know now, you would have changed then. The key thing to remember is that each of those projects provided you with valuable experience that helped make you into the individual you are today.

I remember a particular project, in the early days of my military career that had me working in a barren stretch of desert beside a military airstrip somewhere in central Somalia for the day. Our research required us to monitor a variety of heat index equipment until sundown and then catch the last flight of the day back to our base camp outside of Cairo, Egypt. Sometime in the mid-afternoon the tower officer strolled over and calmly said, “See that plane warming up over there? It’s the last flight out today because everything else has been cancelled. It’s leaving in 5 minutes with or without you.” With the thought of sleeping on bare sand racing through my head, it’s amazing what can be accomplished in 5 minutes. Our small team packed up our gear and made the flight and I learned a valuable lesson that I keep in my back pocket to this day: Just because you think everything is okay doesn’t mean it actually is!

This year, when you sit down to your traditional Thanksgiving feast, take a moment to remember the folks of Plymouth Colony, and all those that have been a part of the many projects you have been involved with over the years and say a little ‘thank you’ to each of them for all the knowledge they have helped you acquire during your career.

Alexander Pope is given credit for the title quote but undoubtedly had never heard of a computer data breach when he put those four simple words together. In reality, a vast majority of data breaches are the result of human error in one form or fashion. However, there are ‘errors’ (little e) and there are ‘Errors’ (big E). I have watched over the past several years as variations on the following ‘Error scenario’ have played out time and time again in the trade press:

“I’m going to download all of our corporate staff and customer’s personally identifiable information to my laptop so I can work with it at home tonight. There’s no need to encrypt it because I’ll delete it all tomorrow. On the way home I need to stop to get enough caffeine and snacks to support my all-night data review. There’s no need to roll up the windows or lock the car as I’ll only be in the coffee shop a minute and no one will even notice the laptop sitting there in the passenger seat.”

To quote a somewhat less historically relevant and more modern phrase, “Seriously???”!

In tribute to All Hallow’s Eve when our neighborhoods will be filled with a variety of ghosts, goblins and costumes of every description looking for their annual treats, I present a list of data breach tricks that have been played on the public over the last year. This list only contains breaches that were a result of human Error as opposed to a system failure or an active hacking effort. They aren’t listed in any particular order (i.e., sorted by largest number of records or by the amount of time the data was available) and include both public and private organizations. As with any ‘top 10’ list I’m sure I’ve overlooked some really good ones. I look forward to your comments with suggested additions. (Information below was gathered from a variety of sources including http://www.privacyrights.org/data-breach and http://www.databreachwatch.org/data-breach-alerts/ )

• Indiana University School of Medicine – A laptop with sensitive information was stolen from a physician’s car. It contained 3,192 patient’s information such as name, age, sex, diagnosis, medical record number, and in 178 cases, Social Security numbers.

• Stanford University Hospital and Clinics – A spreadsheet of names, account numbers, admission and discharge dates, billing charges and diagnosis codes of about 20,000 emergency room patients were posted on a commercial website for nearly a year. The spreadsheet was posted in relation to a question about how to convert the data into a bar graph.

• Yale University – A computer file containing the names and Social Security numbers of approximately 43,000 former faculty, staff, and students was accidentally made accessible online for 10 months.

• Belmont Savings Bank (BSB) – A bank employee left a backup tape on a desk rather than storing it. A cleaning crew disposed of the tape later that night. Names, Social Security numbers and account numbers of over 13,000 customers were exposed. The tape was believed to have been incinerated after disposal along with other sensitive materials from BSB.

• Kitchen Place – Items at a bankruptcy auction included two cabinets with past customer credit card and bank account numbers, methods of payment and home floor plans. Shelves for sale carried boxes of employee information which included names, Social Security numbers and other personal and payroll information. At least one person purchased an item that held customer information and subsequently dumped the papers in the parking lot.

• Sutter Gould Medical Foundation (SGMF) – Around 1,200 patient records were misplaced and buried in a landfill. The box of records contained patient names, Social Security numbers, addresses, diagnostic test results, provider notes and correspondence, disability forms and insurance information. An unnamed vendor is responsible for displacing the box.

• RxAmerica and Accendo Insurance Company – A formatting mistake made Medicare Part D beneficiaries enrolled in Prescription Drug Plans names, ID numbers, drug names and dates of birth viewable through the envelope window of letters sent. Current and former Molina Medicare, Healthy Advantage HMO SNP, and ChoicePartners Medicare HMO members were also affected for a total of 175,000 records.

• Ohio Auditor of State – A state-owned laptop was stolen from the home of a regional auditor. Financial audits of public offices in northwest Ohio were on the laptop. The employee was suspended for 15 days because a password to open the password-protected information on the computer was attached to the computer. This was in violation of office policy.

• U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama – U.S. District Court personnel mistakenly believed that sealed records could be made available on a web-based records system called PACER. Nearly a million defense lawyers, prosecutors, journalists, private investigators, government officials and researchers could have accessed about 40 sealed records for as long as nine months. The records were sealed court applications filed by 10 separate federal prosecutors. Information in the records included installing hidden surveillance cameras, examining Facebook records, obtaining credit information, procuring telephone records and tracking calls. Specific names, addresses, and phone numbers were exposed.

• Science Applications International Corp (SAIC) – Backup tapes stolen from a car contained 4.9 million patients’ names, phone numbers, Social Security numbers, and medical information.

As you sit reading this with your device of choice in one hand and the other reaching in to your child’s plastic pumpkin of goodies, no doubt your mouth hangs agape at the sheer magnitude of the human Error involved in the above incidents. Try to comprehend that more than 540,613,790 records have been breached from 2,707 incidents made public since 2005… many of those the result of simple human Error.

That sound you hear is Alexander Pope turning over in his grave.

Happy Halloween!

One of my favorite data stories goes back a few years ago when the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) released its ‘Bird Strike’ database in 2009. This was just months after Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger safely landed a US Airways Airbus A320 in New York’s Hudson River after it suffered multiple canada geese strikes within 30 seconds of takeoff from LaGuardia. (While many may not realize it, damage to aircraft by birds results in hundreds of millions of dollars of damage each year, and infrequently in the loss of life). The database included a vast compilation of data from airports across the United States and was searchable by a variety of options (state, airport, airplane type, etc.) to see a wealth of data related to each incident.  The release of this data in a growing age of transparency received wide news coverage. Unfortunately, some of the coverage was not exactly what they expected.

It seems that according to the database the ‘bird’ that caused the most damage to aircraft on a consistent basis was … a deer. Deer frequently wander on to runways because of the expanse of grass usually found in close proximity. Their presence can cause significant problems during takeoff and landings.  While the issue was not funny – the inclusion of deer in a database for birds was to some.

Today, if you do a search for the FAA bird strike database, you’ll notice that it is now called the ‘Wildlife Strike’ database.

All too often, even the best intentions can run aground on the rocky shores of reality. When releasing data for reporting purposes, internally within an organization or to the world wide masses, it is not enough to ensure that the data is correct. You must also ensure that the context of the data is clearly and correctly understood as well. In the above example, the FAA learned that a single word made a large difference in the perception of the millions of rows of data and the countless hours spent designing the data models and the physical database.

No doubt everyone can think of their own story of how a seemingly well thought out plan, carefully reviewed and successfully executed, still resulted in less-than-stellar results when all was said and done. Mistakes happen. Seemingly obvious things can get overlooked early on, and, when possibly noticed later, many team members can become fearful of mentioning an item that could result in rework, additional costs or even delay a planned release date. Of course the reality is that eventually the oversight will be discovered by someone somewhere. Any cost overrun or delay could be minor in comparison to the publicity received afterwards.

This would be the perfect place to write about how product name translations from one language to another makes the FAA faux pas look inconsequential, but I’ll save that for a future posting.