Big Data? Haven't a clue!
Jinfo Blog

By Tim Buckley Owen

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Plenty of companies haven’t a clue what to do with their Big Data. And even when they do, there’s no guarantee that they’re doing it legally.

Companies using “data-directed decision making” enjoy a 5-6% boost in productivity as a result, concludes the Economist Intelligence Unit report Big Data: Harnessing a Game-Changing Asset. Nevertheless, almost a quarter of senior executives believe the vast majority of their data are untapped, while over 50% admit to using only about half of them.

Many companies reportedly struggle with the most basic aspects of data management, such as cleaning, verifying or reconciling data across the organisation.  What’s more, many respondents believe there’s a dearth of workforce skills required to sift through, analyse and develop insights from big data.

The companies that are most successful at it are more likely to assign a C-level executive to manage their data strategy, the EIU finds. So that’s the person in the firing line if anything goes wrong – and a report from the United Kingdom Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) suggests there’s plenty that can.

Nearly three quarters of the businesses contacted for the ICO’s 2011 Annual Track Survey did know that the Data Protection Act required them to keep personal data secure, an increase of over a quarter on last year. Nevertheless, the number of breaches in the private sector has increased by nearly 60% so far this year – and less than half of the private individuals the Survey polled believed their data was being processed properly.

As the ICO emphasised, the fact that customers will turn away from brands that let them down should be a powerful incentive for getting your personal data management right – not to mention the risk of a half million pound fine (LiveWire background here). But on top of that, there’s also the issue of deliberate abuse.

In recent evidence to the House of Commons Justice Committee, Information Commissioner Christopher Graham expressed his dissatisfaction that he wasn’t yet able to press for prison sentences for people who had obtained personal information, or sold it on, unlawfully. The Committee agreed, urging the government to exercise its power under the Criminal Justice & Immigration Act 2008 to introduce custodial sentences straight away.

The government may be waiting for the outcome of the Leveson enquiry into the News International phone hacking scandal. But as the committee pointed out, this issue is about more than just media abuses.

And just because senior management doesn’t know about any abuses, that doesn’t necessarily mean they couldn’t happen. As another recent EIU report pointed out (LiveWire coverage here), plenty of risk failures get fixed at business unit level, because people down the food chain don’t want the high-ups to find out.

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