The book insists information is used in every aspect of a business, from day-to-day tasks, to routine administration, to strategic decision-making. Yet the management of this information and its underlying data is often neglected. ‘All medium to large organisations, commercial and government, need a corporate data management service,’ said Gordon, an independent consultant and lecturer specialising in data management. ‘I see many instances where inability to share information between systems leads to mistakes and misunderstanding, which leads to poor customer service and extra expenditure. These organisations cannot afford to be without data management, yet very few recognise the problems – let alone that data management is the solution.’
The book is aimed at data management practitioners, IT and business managers, analysts and consultants in all sectors. It takes a business focus and provides the knowledge and techniques required to implement a data management function in an organisation. The book covers practical approaches to managing corporate data, to improve communication between users and information systems developers and support an integrated approach to data and information resource development
Harry Ellis, a member of web standards body W3C, said: ‘The goal we should aim at is for all data to be captured in digital form once only, as close as possible to the time and place of the observations, decisions and results it is required to reflect. Once captured, it should be stored and distributed so that it can be made readily available to any person or system with a legitimate need to know, while remaining safe from loss, damage or theft. The tricks of the trade to bring this about are well documented in this book.’
The book covers the disciplines related to managing data: data and the enterprise; database development; corporate data modelling; data definition; data naming; metadata; and quality and accessibility.
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