Archive - April 2010

01

APR

Database Integrity Foils Rail Strike

01 APR 2010 | Posted in CRM, IT | Author Alex McLachlan | 1 Comment

Today's high court injunction blocking the strike by RMT signallers was due to inaccuracies in the database they used for polling members. As reported in the Telegraph, there were "serious inaccuracies in the RMT ballot" with problems including votes taken from 11 signal boxes that no longer exist and 23 signal boxes left out of the vote.

The RMT's defence was that the union had gone to considerable lengths to ensure the accuracy of the database, but this argument was obviously not convincing to the judge, who ruled out any appeal.

The implication is that if the errors are not corrected, then repeat ballets would also be ruled unlawful, so there may not be a rapid fix to their problems.

This is a high profile example of the cost of data integrity problems, but similar problems cost many businesses and organisations much more than they realise. Thomas Redman, a leading expert on data quality, estimates that poor-quality data costs organisations about one-fifth of their revenue.

To tackle these problems, organisations need to ensure they have regular management reports of data quality measures, together with business processes for making improvements to the integrity of their databases.