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Why was the quality of the data poor?: Installation

After the data had been converted from Q&A, the UK decided that data would be checked on a rolling basis when the case came up for renewal so that after a year all data would have been checked. New programmes were loaded into the new system straightaway (00500). Once the data had been checked renewal was much easier (01033). The consequence of this decision was that Services continued to use the Q&A system for another year for cases that were not due for renewal (00500) thus exacerbating the data errors in the Multinational sytem. Furthermore underwriters did not start to see benefits from the system until their cases came up for renewal a second time (ie at least a year after installation).

They did not consider loading the data at system launch, the approach that Holland took, because they did not have the staff to do it (01034). In retrospect they do not seem to have regretted this decision (00500) although running two systems in parallel for a year was a heavy burden for both Services and underwriters (00479, 00820, 01127). This burden did not help with encouraging the underwriters to use the system and the rather fuzzy position on data quality was able to persist for well over a year (01123).

I suspect that they would have been better having an initial data conversion period because this would have made it harder for data quality issues to persist. It was definitely a bad decision to convert all the data from Q&A with all its faults only to find that potentially it was not going to be checked for up to a year.

Social influence:
Technical influence:
Tasks: Data conversion

Commentary
Social influence
Technical influence

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© Clare Tagg 2000