Nothing Common About It
Locations, organizations, people...these sorts of very tangible things have associated attributes that show up a lot in administrative systems--attributes like names, addresses, and so forth. In fact they show up so much in so many different systems that collectively are often referred to as 'common data.' These attributes, and the entities they describe, are so real in our physical world that one might be surprised to learn what a problem they pose for folks in the information system business. But they do. And it’s a big problem too...
Consider names, for instance. Most western civ. folks have a first name and a last name, and some use middle initials or names too. There are also some who have a suffix, like ‘Jr.’ or ‘IV’, and a few with an honorific prefix like ‘Rev.’ or ‘Gen.’ Of course there are also a few individuals whose names have only one part, ‘Cher’ and ‘Pele’ are famous examples which come to mind, and some have more than three parts. Different systems react to this real variation in different ways, and although there are many schemes for putting data in, the fun begins when two or more systems need to talk to each other. There’s a fairly low probability that the variation in the data and the schemes implemented to account for it in one system will blend harmoniously with the same set of activities going on in another without a LOT of planning up front.
There aren’t very many opportunities for this kind of planning to take place, because systems are rarely implemented at the same time by the same organization. But this is Mosaic, and we are doing lots of system replacement all at the same time. So I’m happy to report that Hank Childers, Mosaic’s director, is capitalizing on this opportunity to try and make some headway into some of these very vexing problems. He has assembled both policy-oriented and practice-oriented teams to see if we can find some common ground and purpose. I have been fortunate to be included in the practice-level team.
It has actually been a hard, not-very-glamorous slog through some of these issues, but we are getting close to a solution for organizations and departments that will work across the Mosaic implementations. Even if it is only for a moment in time, it will be an important, if unsung, success story for this project if we can actually resolve some of these issues. Stay tuned--if we can pull it off--your occasional *lack* of annoyance about common data will speak volumes.
