(248) 735-0648

Did you know the Russian proverb “Trust but Verify” {Doveryai, no proveryai} was the motto of the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency?

 

Integrity:
We often hear the term “integrity”, commonly used to describe a positive attribute of a person or organization, being increasingly applied in the context of data quality. In the world of database technology, having an uncorrupted or complete operational dataset implies data integrity.

 

In the Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) domain, the central source of operational IT asset information is the Configuration Management Database (CMDB.) In this context, having a complete Configuration Item (CI) record in your CMDB is not enough to build trust. Completeness is just the beginning. The Configuration Item and its associated attributes have to be accurate, current, and properly contextualized for the data to be of business value.

 

Accuracy:

A single reference source for a data point provides a baseline. If a CMDB relies only on a single IT asset discovery tool, it’s accuracy is easy to question. However, if every data value is validated against 2 or more sources, accuracy can almost be assured.

 

Context:

IT assets such as servers typically don’t stand alone. The context for their use is provided by mapping dependencies between IT infrastructure components, which also need to be validated frequently to maintain CMDB quality.

 

Timeliness:

IT environments are very dynamic. Services are constantly being added, retired or updated. To validate any change, it is essential to have current configuration information, which means data quality is always the first order bit in driving value. The core of Blazent’s value add is a relentless focus on Data Quality Management (DQM), ensuring that all data in a CMDB is current and relevant.

 

Trusted Data as a Foundation for Trusted Relationships

When the State of Georgia outsourced their IT operations to an IT Managed Service Provider, both parties needed accurate and timely configuration data to reconcile any billing anomalies between parties. Blazent uses 19 separate data feeds to maintain the quality of the State of Georgia’s CMDB. All of this data is being leveraged, compared and analyzed to ensure its integrity. The use of Blazent solutions within their shared services delivery environment has helped the asset management and configuration management data become the source of truth within their key systems.

 

Over the past several months, the industry publication – Governing, interviewed more than 75 public officials who analyze data for a living across 46 different states. Each official was asked, “In your work, how often do you run into problems with data integrity, accuracy, availability or timeliness?” Literally 100% of the officials have issues with data quality, with 69% saying it was often or frequent.

 

 

graph

 

As you can see, this is a significant issue, and considering the role and presence the state government has in most people’s lives, any issue that affects them, affects you. This is an area that is critical to every state, on pretty much every initiative, and is the core focus of Blazent’s solution.

 

Blazent will be showcasing how to improve data quality at the State level at the 2016 National Association of State Technology Directors (NASTD) annual conference. This year’s event will be running on August 21 – 25, in Washington, D.C. You can learn more about Data-powered IT Service Management in the Blazent White Paper here.