August 21, 2013 at 8:58 pm
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Costs of Data
August 21, 2013 at 11:03 pm
NM.
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
August 22, 2013 at 7:16 am
I'm sorry - but IMHO you start with a basic premise that I disagree with ... the government right or responsibility to collect data. Where in the US Constitution does it authorize government to collect data? ... and I'm not just talking about this from a NSA / Security standpoint but also from an economic / business point of view. In collecting this data government has started to complete with private enterprise.
August 22, 2013 at 7:47 am
JBrosch (8/22/2013)
I'm sorry - but IMHO you start with a basic premise that I disagree with ... the government right or responsibility to collect data. Where in the US Constitution does it authorize government to collect data? ... and I'm not just talking about this from a NSA / Security standpoint but also from an economic / business point of view. In collecting this data government has started to complete with private enterprise.
The Commerce Clause and the Census clause. And whether or not you think the collection activities meet Constitutional muster is pretty much irrelevant, because the data is being collected, and it has to be dealt with. Keep in mind that these programs have existed long enough for anyone who objects to bring action to have them stopped, which implies they are Constitutional.
August 22, 2013 at 8:50 am
Don't get caught up in the politics here. This isn't a debate over government collecting data. The point in the editorial was about research and other data the government has being shared. The information wants to be free, but there are real costs to exposing, storing, managing, etc. the ever expanding amount of data.
August 22, 2013 at 10:02 am
I'm reminded of that scene in Star Trek II where Kirk goes to Spock and says something to the effect of: "These trainees of yours, how good are they really? How would they respond under real pressure?"
Spock replied: "As with all living things: Each according to his gifts."
IT has weathered similar scenarios in the past, and we are to some extent victims of our own success. It wasn't that long ago you almost had to have on-site IT support because remote support tools (and their associated networks) hadn't matured. As those tools matured and became less expensive fewer people could support more systems and end users in more locations. Now it's not at all unusual for someone to offer end user support to someone literally half a world away.
To be certain, the real costs of collecting, storing, managing and disseminating data are rising. And while funding does need to be addressed, it is equally important to look for the opportunities to come up with ways to mitigate those costs, whether it is new technology or new business models or something entirely different.
Of course, that leads us right back to if we find ways to "do more with less" then we will be expected to "DO MORE with less".
Finally, there is the sales & marketing issue. Businesses are looking to improve and gain competitive edge, and the current "Big Data" hype is a prime example. My own company had a town hall with the GM not long ago and he stated he flat out told sales "don't sell anything we can't f-ing deliver." I mean he LITERALLY used the word and everyone's jaws dropped. It's a challenge, but managing everyone's expectations and understanding of what our products/services can and can't do is critical.
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Just my $0.02 from over here in the cheap seats of the peanut gallery - please adjust for inflation and/or your local currency.
August 22, 2013 at 12:56 pm
Jeff Moden (8/21/2013)
NM.
NM?:unsure:
Not all gray hairs are Dinosaurs!
August 22, 2013 at 1:00 pm
Steve Jones - SSC Editor (8/22/2013)
Don't get caught up in the politics here. This isn't a debate over government collecting data. The point in the editorial was about research and other data the government has being shared. The information wants to be free, but there are real costs to exposing, storing, managing, etc. the ever expanding amount of data.
When has government ever been concerned with the 'real costs' of anything? A business would be required to carefully evaluate these 'costs' and make good decisions regard how much data they will manage and make sure their billing to the end user covers these costs or they will lose customers or bankrupt the business.
Government merely borrows (or prints) more money to pay for what they want to do regardless of any cost justification. Anyone working and earning a paycheck is paying for it via inflation (which is a tax). When there is no accountability you get poor decision making, waste and bloat. No good business could survive such a business model.
All this massive data collection going on will eventually implode on itself.
The probability of survival is inversely proportional to the angle of arrival.
August 22, 2013 at 3:04 pm
Miles Neale (8/22/2013)
Jeff Moden (8/21/2013)
NM.NM?:unsure:
Sorry... it means "Never Mind". I wrote a post that was taking out a highly controversial personal frustration (not about the post but inspired by the post) and thought the better of it after I posted it. Since we can't delete posts on this forum, I scrubbed the post with the "NM" entry.
As you can see from the post that follows my "NM" post, there are a great number of people that make the subject I was going to bring up so very "highly controversial". It's just not appropriate for this thread which is really about the cost of sharing data.
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
August 22, 2013 at 4:59 pm
Thanks Jeff, I know what you mean about starting to write or posting and then rethinking it.
And yes it is a potentially a hot topic.
M.
Not all gray hairs are Dinosaurs!
August 22, 2013 at 9:11 pm
I worked with HIPAA data.
When I was working with the developers, the test DB they would develop against had about 65K rows of patients and about 10 facilities. The production DB had over a million residents and over a 1000 individual facilities.
They had a function that looked up the list of active therapists -- but didn't discriminate by facility id. So the function was returning over 23K lines to look for one out of maybe ten. But using the limited DB it worked well. With the production DB it sucked.
But they would never let me sanitize the Production DB to test or develop with.
----------------
Jim P.
A little bit of this and a little byte of that can cause bloatware.
August 23, 2013 at 9:33 am
Jim P. (8/22/2013)
But they would never let me sanitize the Production DB to test or develop with.
And Jim this is a challenge I face as well, and probably many others.
The confidentiality of the data is seen to be so high that many believe that it should not be replicated, or the physical resources to do it are not seen as too valuable and a waste of space. The problem with this lack of insight and strategy is limiting to those who would like efficiency and a better user experience. And to them the amount of time spent waiting is not an issue as long as they believe the data is safe and the resources as limited as they can be.
Little do these folks realize that a 1 minute wait over 25k transactions a week, or other like metric will add up to a fill salary every month this is foolishness is allowed to continue. And they also do not realize is that any DBA who has the needed password has full access to every bit of data in the system and that the security of that data is already at the mercy of the DBA.
These same people would never let a person tune their car or repair their house without needed testing like doing it on the best guess. They would be horrified to know that their plummer just took their best guess at what was wrong and what was needed to make the water flow at an acceptable rate and thus ended up with a bill of 10k. They want the real testing and real estimate when it involves their money but who knows what drives them when they spend the companies cash.
<End Friday Rant #1>
Not all gray hairs are Dinosaurs!
August 23, 2013 at 8:02 pm
Miles Neale (8/23/2013)
<End Friday Rant #1>
That is what I ran into. And then the one that I found that was left alone. I found XML data that was never obfuscated or de-identiified stored in the test DB before me. I had a "s--t-fit" and brought it to management in a way that I was covered and left their butts hanging.
I can't afford +$100K in fines.
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Jim P.
A little bit of this and a little byte of that can cause bloatware.
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