In a world where data has become both a driver for decisions and a measure of power for the people who hold it, the Data Mavericks have become a risk that the introduction of GDPR will force many organisations to address. Information held in a silo outside the organisations collective responsibility will make it difficult for the organisation to demonstrate its commitment to compliance.

Data is generated by everything – from buildings and machinery to employees and customers. Each of these data sources has the power to change the relative success of a company, though only if data is understood, accurate, analyzed and acted upon. Read the full article on the Var Guy

“In God we trust. Allothers must bring data.” - W Edward Deming

This age-old quote has been used many times and whether you believe in God or not, what’s clear is data has become the foundation upon which we base our decisions. But how do we establish trust in our data?

I was recently at a Health Informatics Society Australia event where one of the speakers gave a presentation on the devices she uses to capture her health, movement, and activity data on a daily basis.

Obtaining this data was clearly important to her—so much so that she had three different devices to ensure she captured all the relevant information. She was in Information Technology, so on a regular basis she downloaded the information from the manufacturers’ websites, checked the data, then used it to create a set of graphs etc., to monitor and track her progress.

Well, the download from one of the devices reported she had taken 28,000 steps.

Plausible, but probably not on an average workday. (For the laypeople among us, 2,000 average steps is about a mile, which means 28,000 steps equals about 14 miles, or 22.5 kilometres—just a bit longer than a half marathon!)

Clearly, this was an anomaly. And because she because she had been smart enough to download the information and check it against the data on her other devices, she could eliminate it and not have it affect her progress charts.

It left me wondering what I would do if I wasn’t a smart IT person, didn’t download and double check my data, but simply used the data presented to make decisions. So, out of curiosity, I opened the Health App on my iPhone, and looked at the data. There was a significant amount of information on steps, distance, and altitude captured for multiple instances on multiple days. But then I thought, “How do I know if it’s right?”

The answer was I didn’t. I had no means to verify if what I was looking at was right. Imagine if that information was going into a system where people were using it to make decisions about things that affected my life and I couldn’t check or confirm the information was correct. How could I trust their decisions?

We now live in a world where Big Data has become the next big decision aid. And being able to analyse the data I have access to—on a much larger scale—has provided marketers, salespeople, and business decision makers with more data than ever to base their decisions.

With the advent of the Internet of Things—with data collected from our fridges, phones, GPS, and all the other connected devices that we as a population are now buying—Big Data will continue to get bigger and harder to assess. Now more than ever, we need dependable solutions that can identify and deliver trusted data—that in turn will drive intelligent business decisions.

About the Author.

Neil Currie is the CEO of QFire Software. In August 2015, QFire Software released the “QFire Trust Score” as a part of QFire’s Distributed Data Quality product “Validator”. The “QFire Trust Score” is specifically designed to assist analysts in determining the calibre of data quality, providing a smarter basis for data driven decisions.

For small to medium MVNO’s, generating timely and accurate invoices, managing risk, compliance, interconnection costs and understanding exposure from Bi-swap agreements with other wholesalers, can be a demanding challenge. Whilst large Operators have the financial resources to invest in high end systems to automate the challenges of Revenue Assurance, smaller operators do not.

Now a cost effective automated solution is available for small to medium MVNO’s to process CDR’s efficiently and to have them validated against the attributes of each agreement, Supplier and Customer destination combinations, consumption against current contract terms for each party, and margins management.

Revenue Assurance for Telco, is built within QFire's Distributed Data platform. It enables each CDR to be processed and checked against the applications defined tables.

This validation package incorporates 39 predefined validation checks required by the dataset specification for payments to be made against the Health Check by the commissioner to the provider.This packages is delivered as a zip file available for import it includes the preconfigured Dataset, Reference Data a test load file and the NHS Dataset specification for reference purposes,Manager.

This validation package incorporates predefined validation checks for missing data, code checks and refernce checks as required to validate the data to be submitted to the ministry.

This packages is delivered as a zip file available for import it includes the preconfigured Dataset, Reference Data a test load file and the meteor specification AIHW ABF for Emergency Services 2016 Dataset for reference purposes,

UK Data Management and Business Intelligence reseller, Orion & Associates, is pleased to announce its award of G-Cloud 7 Lot 3 (SaaS). The company a dedicated Data Management and BI Solution Provider includes QFire Software’s Validator Platform and Yellowfin’s Mobile BI products amongst its portfolio. With offerings Hosted on Amazons AWS platform or available for hosting with other providers, the company provides a robust platform for enhanced operational management and decision making for Public Sector organisations moving in the direction of data driven organisations. “Information can be prepared, analysed, reported and collaboratively engaged via dashboards and storyboards which are securely delivered to the desk top and mobile devices”, said Orion & Associates’ Managing Director, David Pearson. G-Cloud is a procurement vehicle of the UK Government for the provision of commodity information technology services that use cloud computing. Public sector organisations can search for services on the “Digital Marketplace, an online catalogue covered by the G-Cloud frameworks and buy services without needing to run a full tender or competition procurement process. About the G-Cloud Framework: https://www.digitalmarketplace.service.gov.uk/g-cloud/framework About Yellowfin Yellowfin is a global Business Intelligence (BI) and analytics software vendor passionate about making BI easy. Founded in 2003 in response to the complexity and costs associated with implementing and using traditional BI tools, Yellowfin is a highly intuitive 100 percent Web-based reporting and analytics solution. Yellowfin is a leader in mobile, collaborative and embedded BI as well as Location Intelligence and data visualization. Over 10,000 organizations, and more than one million end-users across 70 different countries, use Yellowfin every day. For more information, visit www.yellowfinbi.com About Orion & Associates: With over eighty years of collective subject matter expertise, Orion & Associates delivers superior business performance via its range of data unification, data quality management and business analytics solutions. Working collaboratively with its clients, Orion & Associates combine leading software solutions and industry expertise to deliver successful data and business analytic solutions that address each organizations’ unique challenges. A key component of Orion & Associates’ success is its commitment to providing ongoing thought leadership throughout a clients’ data journey. For more information, visit www.orionandassociates.uk About QFire Software QFire Software ‘s Validator brings the capability to understand, collect, validate, protect, monitor and enrich data. Recognised as a Gartner Cool Vendor in 2013. QFire’s approach to data acquisition, preparation and quality is implemented through its Distributed Data Quality framework in Validator a low impact, simple easy to use solution distributed in all major geographies since 2014. For more information, visit www.qfiresoftware.com

QFire Validator has been selected by Single Cell’s Progenitor Software to collaborate in a major contract data initiative on behalf of the Australian Government’s NSW Health division.

Progenitor, incorporating QFire Validator validation technology, will be the exclusive software used to compile existing contract data from NSW Health local districts for the development a central repository of contract data. The final, validated data will allow the NSW Health to better analyse and manage their engagement across the procurement and contract ecosystem.

When determining the end-need result of validated and standardised data for NSW Health, Progenitor looked to secure a partner to assist with the validation and loading of data into the application. QFire Validator attributes made it the uniquely qualified choice based on the scope of the project:

Ability to load data to SharePoint based applicationsCreation of standard validation packages for export/reuses in other installationsValidation and standardisation of data from multiple sources as a part of the loading processEase of use: Allows deployment by end users who have the best understanding of the data

Chris Holmes, Managing Director of Progenitor’s parent company Single Cell commented “Knowing the capability needed to be simple to use and could be deployed to a number of different locations concurrently, the team at QFire worked with us to make modifications where necessary to ensure NSW Health has a good experience of both their technology and ours.”

Neil Currie, CEO of QFire Software said “we are pleased Single Cell has chosen QFire Validator as the loading process for this implementation of their Progenitor application – creating a standardised validation package to migrate data into their application is exactly the use case we envisaged when we added that function to our QFire’s Validator product.”

The rollout across NSW Health using Progenitor, incorporating QFire Validator validation technology, is expected to take place over the next 12 months as local health districts are engaged and the on-boarding process continues.

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About Progenitor:

Progenitor is a Procurement and Contract Management System, developed and delivered by Single Cell. With Government operational considerations firmly in mind, Progenitor was developed to address the specific requirements and challenges faced by Government agencies. Unlike existing products on the market, Progenitor focuses heavily on Australian Government based financials, taxonomies and processes around procurement and contract management.

Progenitor drives transparency, efficiency and value for money, by providing a simple, scalable, user friendly system, which reflects the client’s specific process, policy and approach. The usability and productivity gains achieved by using Progenitor allow organisations to achieve more with less, a challenge specifically facing resource strained government departments. This post-modern, cloud based solution is delivered either on premises or via Microsoft Azure, and provides extensive capabilities around procurement sourcing, contract, category, and vendor management.

About QFire:

QFire Software delivers the capability to understand, collect, validate, protect, monitor and enrich data. QFire’s Validator offering has been distributed in all major geographies since 2014. QFire “Embedded” released in March 2015 represents the delivery of a new offering from QFire designed to provide other vendors the capability to embed the functions provided in QFire’s Validator product within their own solutions and forms the foundation for QFire’s future direction. QFire is now represented in Australia, New Zealand, India, South Africa, Europe and the US.