Archive for February, 2008
A process problem with the trains [Update]
A little while ago we shared the story of the Irish Rail train that left the platform at the correct time but somehow forgot 300 passengers, and left with just one visually impaired passenger.
From a reliable source we have recently learned of the findings of the investigation into what happened. It is a salutory lesson […]
Leap year babies are hopping mad
Information Quality can be defined as “meeting or exceeding ‘information customer’ expectations”.
Today of all days (the 29th February) there will be countless examples of incidents where one particular pool of ‘information consumers’ will fail to have their expectations met. I’m talking, of course, about people who have their birthday today … leap year babies.
Across the […]What a nice model of furniture
Also from The Register is this story of a data quality boo boo on the Marks and Spencer website (the offending page has been removed from the site, but el Reg kindly kept a screenshot).
The text of an on-line catalogue entry described an item for sale, emphasising its “modern curves, soft-look styling and hardwood […]Super Tuesday - Gloomy e-voting Wednesday
The Register has highlighted not one but two potential information quality problems with the ballots being cast in the pre-Presidential primaries in the US.
Firstly, Democrats Abroad decided to support Democrats living overseas by letting them vote on-line. This sounds like an excellent idea, this ‘electronic voting’. However, there seem to have been some concerns with […]Irish bank sends debtor details to wrong addresses
The Irish Examiner reports today that a leading Irish bank accidentally sent details on defaulted loans to the wrong address. Two letters were sent to the one address - which was the wrong one. The contents of the letters contained the correct name and address information for the account holders (it appears from the media […]
IQ Trainwrecks are kind of like buses..
…none for ages then a lot of them at once.
Yesterday and today have been bumper days for trainwreck reporting in the media. From the two culled from Damien Mulley, and one suggested by Nick Thomas to the ones I’ve picked up on today, it looks like February will be a busy month on the […]Monkey See… Monkey Do
Courtesy of Nigel Thomas comes this story of an IQ Trainwreck that eminates originally from the hallowed halls of Harvard University, where monkeys swing freely through the Ivy (original story previously published at www.thedailywtf.com as “I’ve Got the Monkey Now”).
The Harvard Business School Publishing redeveloped and relaunched their website back in 1999. Part of the QA […]Media trainwrecks (two of two - aka Presentation Quality is everything)
Again, with thanks to Damien Mulley we present quite possibly the best example of Information Overload in a press release. It appears that an unnamed media organisation in Dublin passed a press release on to Damien (who apart from blogging intensively and organising the Irish Blog Awards amongst other things is also a journalist).
Unfortunately they forgot […]Media trainwrecks (one of two)
Courtesy of Irish uber-blogger and technology journalist Damien Mulley come two excellent examples of poor quality information getting loose.
The first concerns an article published in the Irish Examiner Newspaper. They published a story this week which puported to show that Irish employers were losing millions of euro due to staff members using Social Networking sites like Bebo […]
