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Getting data silos under control
Master data management is an emerging technique for organizing silos of information
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TechnoratiThree pillars of organizational data
To understand what master data management is, you need to understand the three types of organizational data, according to an Oracle white paper published last December:
Transactional Data is generated during the actual operation of the organization. The Internal Revenue Service, for instance, could count the data on the tax forms it receives as transactional data. Such data is usually stored in online transaction processing tables, which are designed to be updated frequently.
Master Data covers all the entities, such as individuals, products or regulations that initiate or are otherwise involved in the organization’s transactions. They can be people, companies, assets or even regulations. They can be, and usually are, referenced in more than one system in the organization.
Analytical Data can be used to produce reports and generally help organizations make decisions. The IRS, for instance, can produce reports on how much tax money was collected or how many returns were filed. This type of data tends to be stored in data warehouses or data marts, which support heavy aggregation and data mining.
Because master data elements are used across different systems, they must be represented with consistency so that the analytical information that is produced from transactions can be tallied and analyzed with accuracy. For a copy of the white paper, go to GCN.com, Quickfind 818.
Under immigration reform legislation, a stipulation called the Employment Eligibility Verification System would mandate that employers check the eligibility of all current or potential employees against federal and state databases.
Potentially, information, or lack of information, about this person could be found in databases managed by the Social Security Administration, Homeland Security Department, Internal Revenue Service and perhaps even the FBI.
But isn’t the problem with data, which prompted post-Sept. 11 criticism, that one database doesn’t know what’s in the other database?
The integration of data within a federal agency and sharing it among various agencies is a long-standing problem. Master data management, or MDM, is one response.
“The panacea of MDM is to identify the true single source of the truth for the data and to use that one source as the source for all applications and programs,” said Brad Cole, a solution architect manager at Oracle.
And the seemingly simple task of identifying this single source of truth can have profound effects — if done correctly.
“Until recently, most government agencies were more focused on building a data warehouse and reporting against that data warehouse,” said Mike Protz, director of U.S. government support at SAS Institute. “Now they are moving beyond basic warehousing and reporting and focusing more on the advantages of MDM as an enterprise strategy. With the growth of service-oriented architecture and systems integration, MDM has garnered more attention.”
Managing data silos, a subject familiar to government managers, is the end game of MDM. Putting the concept in motion can be overwhelming, however. Steadily, vendors and consultants see it as a new opportunity. Yet others see MDM as hype and today’s way of capitalizing on an age-old problem.
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