Your Data has a Life - Revive It
Michael Norris
Director, Asset Information Management,SCL
Inspiration Through Privitisation
Knowledge of the company physical assets is of critical importance for the commercial and
safe operation of a business. This subject has come to the forefront in the UK in a big way in
recent years, following the "selling off" of public monopolies to the private sector. British
Rail (BR) was "broken up" into a number of different railway companies in an effort to
breathe new life, investment and competition into what was seen as deteriorating
circumstances for the railways.
Almost overnight, and as if by magic, there appeared Train Operating Companies (TOCs)
who transported passengers, Freight Operating Companies (FOCs) who transported freight,
and the one and only company responsible for the maintenance and management of the
railway infrastructure - track, signals and major stations - Railtrack.
At the time of the privitisation the UK Railways were already separated into 10 Zones (now
7). Each Zone operated with great autonomy. It possessed its own maintenance crews who
were responsible for the upkeep of the track and signals within the geography managed by
the Zone. The maintenance crews were to form the other "new" key players of the railways -
the Infrastructure Maintenance Contractors (IMCs).
The focus of this paper is specifically about what happened next - in terms of assets and asset
data. The paper relates the data quality strategy deployed in trying to acquire and maintain
good quality data. In particular it relates to how a project was kicked-off to provide a
comprehensive register of the infrastructure assets and the key findings of the project.
The Project
The Project was approved in April 1999 and provided a budget to do the following: -
- Build a single, national physical asset and hazards register and deploy nationally
- Migrate asset data out of local systems into the asset data repository
- Conduct a data collection exercise to "gap-fill and verify" 10% of the asset records - to an agreed level of quality by November 1999
- Develop and implement processes and procedures to address the maintenance of asset data
- Develop and implement processes and procedures to support a quality management system for asset data.
- Develop implementation plans for the collection (including "gap-filling and checking") of the other 90% of asset data records - to be completed by November 2000
Background - so what's the problem?
Before we look at the asset data quality as part of the Railtrack Project experience let's
consider some of the problems encountered in the handling of data by way of a simple
example - data held in the Address Book.
The Data in an Address Book
A typical address book can be a "minefield" of information. There is a very good chance that
the data recorded will be useful since the person who is going to use it put it there. They
know when they recorded it, the process by which it was acquired, the source of the data and,
generally, the reliance they can put on that data. Hence,
- If the user of the data is the owner and maintainer of the data the data is likely to match the requirements of the user.
- The responsibility for the capture and maintenance of the data, and the process and procedures by which this is carried out, should be the responsibility of the owner / user of the data.
What Data to Record?
Perhaps two partners wish to share information about their circle of friends for the purpose of
putting a single, definitive, common list of names and addresses together. Under those
circumstances it would have been useful, before they had started to collect data, to have
agreed what kind of data should be recorded and how it should be recorded (a rare event).
Let's start with the basics - such as a person's "Name". What exactly do we need to record
about "Name" - perhaps, the "Surname "and "Firstname" and a "Middle Initial"? How do we
want to record it? Should it be "Surname" followed by "Firstname" or vice-versa?
What other detail is normally recorded about someone? We might recommend an "Address"-
data item including "Street Number" and "Street Name", and possibly "Town", "County" or
"State", "Postcode" or "Zipcode", or "Country"?
Telephone details might be useful such as "Home Tel No", "Fax No", "Mobile No"?
"Business/Office Nos", or "Pager No"? And, today we might also want to record details such
as someone's "Email Address". Some of this information may be considered "basic" and
some "extra detail".
What is "basic information" and what is the "extra detail" - the latter may be defined as "nice
to have" but rarely used if at all. If we are not going to use it why keep it?
- Data for its own sake is an expensive commodity if maintained and if it is not maintained
it becomes "unsafe" to use.
Data Storage (Where to hold our prize data?)
But where do we store all of this information? We can use handheld electronic devices
(Personal Digital Assistants or PDAs) - Paper based Organisers or Diaries, PCs (with more
software applications to choose from), wall calendars or web-based storage areas.
And even as individuals we will use different places to record different but related data. This
creates tremendous difficulties when we attempt to pull together an up-to-date list of names
and addresses.
- Data about the same "assets" but held in different places is usually not-sychronised. It is
difficult and slow to integrate, often inconsistent in format and plainly unreliable - and,
unfortunately, it tends to stays that way.
