Employee training helps data quality

According to a recent TechTarget report, data quality is a company-wide effort. Rather than keeping data management knowledge in the hands of the IT department, the source suggested expanding training programs to encompass business end users as well. The training could convince users that the data they handle is important and can cause crippling problems if there are flaws.

"Business users - the people who actually touch the data - need training to help them understand how information is used and how [companies] get impacted when it is not correct," consultant Andres Perez told the source.

TechTarget, however, did not advocate one program in particular. The curriculum of training should differ from one firm to another and adapt by industry, according to the source. Each type of organization faces its own unique data governance and management issues, meaning a focus on business-specific data issues could pay dividends.

Consultant Jim Harris recently spoke to IT Business Edge about ways to make employees care about the quality of the data they use. He stated that the challenge lies in making information seem important despite its ubiquity. While once it was rare and overlooked, now it is common and taken for granted.