Castlebridge Associates

Over the past few months I've been involved in a number of events related to Cloud Computing and have had countless conversations about the pros and cons of outsourcing, as well has having studied a number of business arrangements that boiled down to someone being a Data Processor for someone else, a Data Controller.

I have found that my message in each of these apparently disparate situations can now be boiled down to:

• It's the Information, Stupid and
• The Fine Print can feck you up frustrate your intent and
• If you can't find who is responsible for the thing, then it is you who is responsible.

Over the past few months I've been involved in a number of events related to Cloud Computing and have had countless conversations about the pros and cons of outsourcing, as well has having studied a number of business arrangements that boiled down to someone being a Data Processor for someone else, a Data Controller.

I have found that my message in each of these apparently disparate situations can now be boiled down to:

• It's the Information, Stupid and
• The Fine Print can feck you up frustrate your intent and
• If you can't find who is responsible for the thing, then it is you who is responsible.

I was asked recently to present at a Breakfast briefing being run by another local Irish consulting firm that specialises in Cloud Computing (they're imaginatively called Cloud Consulting and are run by a really nice bunch of guys, including Tim Pullen).

HP have announced an "interesting" service which will allow people to print from mobile devices to printers using an email address. Your document will then be whisked off to HP's DataCentre from whence it will find its way to your printer. 

Magical.

But as with all magic there is a dark side.

Very belatedly (it's been a busy month for the small team in Castlebridge Associates), here is the Blog Carnival post for the International Association for Information & Data Quality

Cloud Computing is the coming wave. There is no escaping it. However, when it comes to managing Data Protection and Information Quality we need to be wary that this new Emperor may be somewhat lacking in the clothing department.

There are two areas where organisations need to consider their strategies when interacting with the Cloud are:

• Information Quality
• Data Protection/Privacy

Over the past few days I've been called at home by the accounts department regional newspaper looking for a prominent local business.  This is something that happens every year around this time for the past few years.

Each year my wife or I politely inform the accounts department that they have the wrong number. Each year we are told that the error will be corrected. Each year we get another call. This year we've had one yesterday and one today. I predict we'll get one tomorrow as well.

This is a good example of how poor quality information can have both a direct financial cost and an indirect reputational cost for businesses. Let's look at this issue in a little more detail.

Flicking through one of the local newspapers this morning (the Wexford People) I spotted a story about a laptop that had been stolen from a primary care Medical Centre in Wexford town last week.

What struck me about the story was how they made a point of stressing the value of the laptop (€1500) but at no time did they mention whether or not the laptop held any personal data relating to patients at the Medical Centre in question.

A colleague of mine in Switzerland today sent me some details of the German Government showing the value of information as an asset, albeit in a manner which is, to my mind, questionable.

The German Government is considering purchasing personal and financial data relating to German nationals which, it is alleged, was stolen from an unnamed Swiss financial institution. The asking price for these records is €2.5 million, which if you apply the figure of 1300 records that Business Week is quoting, puts the price tag on personal data at just under €2000 per record.

One comment I have heard in the past about Data Protection Compliance is that it is a burden on the business, an overhead, something to be tackled when you've done with the important stuff of setting up and running your business.

However, this could not be further from the truth. I've written on my personal blog about using an Asset Life Cycle model to help manage your information more effectively. In that post I used the data protection failings in Temple St. hospital as a case study for how thinking about information as an asset might have prevented the problems. At the end of next month I'm also delivering a FREE tutorial that might help prompt some clear thinking for people in this area at an ICS/IAIDQ conference.