Principle 10

Data Quality and Integrity

Statement

By identifying authoritative sources, the activities related to data maintenance, data integrity and integration are more efficient, consistent, and cost-effective.

Rationale

• The University will recognize the value inherent in the business processes that create/edit the data and maximize the intelligence across systems.
• Relying on identified authoritative sources for data, versus maintaining multiple points of maintenance and updates of redundant data will reduce costs and improve efficiency.

Implications

• This may require automating existing manual processes to increase data integrity and reduce redundancy.
• Authorized data will be accessible and available for re-use by any entitled systems and/or processes. Capture, edits and corrections will be made at the authoritative data sources.
• Functional and technical owners of authoritative data sources must be identified.
• Well-defined and agreed-upon rules for data validation at the point of data entry/maintenance are critical for maintaining data integrity and reducing costs.
• Automated data integrations will be assessed based on cost/benefit analyses; some integrations may still require manual intervention.