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Data Quality Metrics and IT Governance

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Micheal is presenting a workshop on Data Quality Metrics and IT Governance in Sydney on 13th April 2006 for Ark Group:

Data Quality Metrics and IT Governance

Registration: 9.00am
Workshop starts: 9.30am
Workshop ends: 12.30pm

About the workshop:

This workshop will examine the link between data quality metrics, and the delivery and monitoring of this information to the operational, executive, and board management levels of your firm. These tools and approaches will ensure measurable impact on data quality and improved corporate governance over the information under management by the organisation.

In this workshop, the relationship between the frameworks available for implementing data quality and the metrics for assessing levels of data quality will be explored, together with their application to your industry. Practical tools to report on data quality at various management levels will be examined and their strengths and weaknesses will be tested. The issues to consider in the design of the reporting process necessary to address the corporate governance requirements of the information management function will also be addressed, together with templates and tools for addressing these requirements.

About your workshop leader: Micheal Axelsen

Micheal is the Director of Information Systems Consulting within BDO Kendalls? Consulting Division. Micheal has extensive expertise in the evaluation and assessment of information system projects and information technology services for large businesses and government agencies in line with business strategies, goals, and objectives.

Micheal has had several articles published on information systems and business in his role as Chairman for the CPA Australia Information Technology & Management Centre of Excellence. Micheal is also co-author of research papers on information systems in association with the University of Queensland and Georgia State University.

Australian Accounting Review Supplement

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The Australian Accounting Review (Supplement #37, November 2005) issue devoted to information technology/systems issues was released in November. I reproduce a small portion of the supplementary edition editorial (which was co-written by John Campbell, Shauna Kelly, and myself – but mostly John) below:

The traditional objective of accounting is to provide information about the pecuniary affairs of an organisation. While this is largely a historical activity that focuses on past performance, the information that accounting provides also forms a useful basis for future action. In this historical context, information technology is commonly viewed as providing a productivity-enhancing and cost-effective means of storing and monitoring transactions, standardising fundamental accounting operations and facilitating compliance and financial reporting obligations. Information technology has reduced the cost of these traditional accounting functions by facilitating the processing and monitoring of large amounts of information about organisational performance. Despite the accretion of these and other benefits to the profession in general, there still exists a degree of uncertainty about the role of accounting professionals in the selection, use and management of information technology in organisations.

The papers in this special Australian Accounting Review supplement address important aspects of information technology that are of relevance to accounting practitioners and researchers. The supplement has been commissioned by CPA Australia’s Centre of Excellence for Information Technology and Management.*

The call for papers for this special edition attracted a large number of high-quality submissions, making the final selection process difficult. All research papers were peer-reviewed and carefully scrutinised by the Centre of Excellence to ensure that those selected for publication reflect the diversity of information technology issues relevant to the profession. The papers that follow deal with a broad range of topics, from discussion and research on IT governance, the impact of IT on business models, electronic business evaluation and adoption, information systems audit and control, IT investment decision-making and strategic planning in government agencies.

You can access this online through CPA Australia, or sometimes authors will provide copies upon request.

Feature articles from the November 2005 edition of Australian Accounting Review (Supplement #37 only) include:

Editorial: information technology – impacts and implications for accounting
Editorial for edition 37 of the Australian Accounting Review information technology supplement.

IT governance – are boards and business executives interested onlookers or committed participants?
This paper looks at what has to be governed and what IT governance needs to encompass to be effective, examines some of the issues of current IT governance practices from boardroom and business perspectives.

IT investment practices in large Australian firms
This review explores the procedures used by large Australian firms during the four major decisionmaking stages of the IT investment cycle: planning, evaluation, implementation and postimplementation review.

The social dimension of business and IS/IT alignment: case studies of six public-sector organisations
This paper presents the results of a study of the social dimension of the alignment of business strategy with information systems and information technology.

The pervasiveness of information and communication technology: its effects on business models and implications for the accounting profession
This paper discusses the main challenge that confronts firms because of the continued development in information and communication technologies (ICT) is the reduction in information asymmetry as product markets become increasingly information driven.

Consideration of options from an entrepreneuria, technical and operational perspective – an e-business design framework approach
This paper draws upon the emergent knowledge of e-business, together with traditional strategy theory, and provide a simple framework for the evaluation of business models for e-business.

The effect of e-commerce adoption on small/medium enterprise industry structure, competitive advantage and long-term profitability
This paper seeks to evaluate the relationship between e-commerce adoption and long-term profitability in small/medium enterprises (SMEs).

Information systems audit and control issues for enterprise management systems: qualitative evidence
This paper presents the results of a study on how the introduction of such software creates a new set of information systems audit and control problems.

Supplement on information technology
This issue of Australian Accounting Review is accompanied by a special supplement dedicated to new research work on Information Technology and Management.

Enterprise resource planning systems – implications for managers and management
This paper analyses the implications of enterprise resource planning systems for organisations in general and for managers and professionals in particular.

Feel free to email me if you you need details – these articles can usually be purchased through CPA Australia if you are not a subscriber.

Welcome from Sunny PNG

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It has been a long time between posts – this seems to be the downfall of most bloggers.

Some time ago I was asked by CPA Australia to present on the topic ‘Management Information Reporting, including the IT Aspects’ at the annual CPA Australia/CPA PNG joint conference in Port Moresby. I accepted despite the trepidation one gets when you know you’ll have a 10-week-old baby, as well as a fractious two-year old, to look after (or rather, that you will have to leave with your loving wife when you go overseas!).

This blog post is coming from PNG (Crowne Plaza Hotel). I am here with Jim Dickson (International Director CPA Australia), Professor Colin Clarke (Vice President CPA Australia), and Patrick Hoiberg (former ‘king poobah’ of the ICAA),

The conference started yesterday with an opening by Jim Dickson and a keynote address by Colin Clarke, and then my presentation (after morning tea, of course).

The reaction seems to have been very positive (the audience was very kind, all 600 of them!), and I enjoyed giving the speech although we ran out of time for questions at the end (I had planned on an hour and a quarter but I had not reckoned on the logistics of the situation – getting 600 people to their seats is no easy task so every session tends to start late). If I can coax Jim Dickson to give me some photos, I will post them online here (tends to brighten up a blog!).

The IT Governance guide has rated a mention or two along the way, and everyone who has seen it has been very impressed. Jan Barned tells me sales have probably gone into the 200s already, which is very impressive for a newly launched guide. I understand I have a launch luncheon to attend on 1st December in Melbourne – so that should be good.

When I have access to my web storage (when I get back to Brisbane on Sunday) I will post the presentation slides and the text of my speech as near as I can get it, and we’ll have that sorted then.

It’s been very energising in PNG, and it seems to have been worth it.

OpenDocument Standards

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ZDNet is reporting on the new OpenDocument standard (approved by OASIS) that may “turn the world inside out” (which, frankly, is one of those phrases to use when hyperbole just isn’t enough). It does promise great things, as the promise of sharing documents independently of the application that created them may finally become a reality (although, predictably, Microsoft advises it refuses to support an inferior standard and will accordingly go its own way).

I suspect we shouldn’t hold our breath in this regard. However, if there is enough momentum to using it, the potential for open source software applications to really become usable (e.g. OpenOffice) would become very high. I personally use OpenOffice at home and for almost everything I do it is perfectly OK. I do remain sceptical of the great and wonderful features that are packed into Office most of the time – I mean, seriously, does anyone ever use the Version Save feature of Word? And if you do, do you hope and pray it won’t corrupt your document?

(PS in case you are wondering what the reason is for the gap in publishing my blogs, the gap is due to the birth of my baby daughter, Olivia Grace on 9th September. Parenthood – it’s good for family life, bad for blogging).

Disaster Recovery Planning Made Simple

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Disaster recovery and contingency planning have been highlighted in the past week as the biggest issue since sliced bread started getting mouldy, as Hurricane Katrina hit NOLA hard and fast. In its wake was left the startling realisation that even the richest country in the world can have infrastructure devastated and destroyed by the forces of nature. The cost of the disaster is $US100 billion and climbing, with a significant part of that the IT Infrastructure.

And the week prior to that was the Zotob worm, which shut down Holden’s processing plants for a day (estimated costs: $A6,000,000 and yes, I checked the zeros).

In the IT context, both these events show that there is an increasing reliance upon information technology, and clearly business continuity plans are going to be top of the charts again for a while for our clients. This also comes back to IS Strategy and Governance procedures for clients. The facts bear out the old adage that luck is the residue of good planning – good IS Strategies and Business Continuity planning will help business A survive and business B not.

Probably a future cause celebre fot IT Disaster Planning – although some would perhaps suggest that it has worked too well – has been www.directnic.com, which is an ISP operating in a New Orleans downtown skyscraper that has maintained its connection to the internet throughout the disaster. Its biggest problem now is that it is getting many hits from around the world because people are blogging about it (just as I am now) which is causing some stress on their connectivity.

They have also maintained a blog about the disaster throughout, as reported by The Register and located at /mgno.com.

Interestingly, at least partly because of this blog, the ongoing debate about the issues related to blogs and their journalistic integrity has now tended to swung in favour of the humble blogger who, as johnny-on-the-spot in a time like this, tends to report what they see rather than filter it through the eyes of a journalist – which is both its strength and its weakness, clearly.