Quality
Our information and insights have the level of quality needed to support good decisions
Quality refers to the accuracy, timeliness and completeness of the information we hold and the insights we create from it.
Effectively managing quality is important because…
Information and insights are used to make decisions when they’re trustworthy and a key driver of trust is quality. They need to be accurate and complete enough, and ready to be used when the decision is being made.
The quality of our data and information determines the services we can deliver and the experience of clients, staff and partners. Quality means a ‘single source of truth’ for important data and information, so we show mana manaaki: people don’t have re-tell their story and we get it right the first time.
Some decisions need ‘gold standard’ quality, like verifying identity or public reporting on the number of people on benefit. But for others we can deliver for ‘fit for purpose’ quality, so we can support more decisions, with more impact.
Quality needs to be measured over the full lifecycle of information: from when it’s collected, used, updated and destroyed. The same applies to insights, which have a use-by date if they’re not maintained. Quality can also be about holding information in the right format so it can be reused easily, or not holding the information ourselves, but having a record that we’ve verified it.
Moving from:
- MSD does not know, understand, or govern its information assets appropriately, and therefore cannot unlock the value of its information.
- Our insights sometimes have a ‘one size fits all’ approach to quality, or the quality is unknown.
To:
- Information is collected and maintained in a format and quality that is appropriate for its use.
- One source of truth is maintained, clients and partners do not have to repeat their story.
- Decision makers have confidence that our insights are fit-for-purpose, high quality, and timely.
When this is working well:
We have effective Data & information governance, which sets the ways we measure and maintain the quality of the data we hold. We are continuing to grow our Data & information governance by partnering with tangata whenua, so that we look after and use Māori data appropriately.
We maintain a single source of truth for our key information assets through Master data management, so it’s used consistently across the organisation and with partners. Metadata management helps us find the right data and information, understand what it means, know where it came from, and what we have consent to use it for, like working across a whānau.
We have ongoing processes for Data quality management and Information and data lifecycle management to monitor and maintain accuracy of information / data collecting, and insights we’re generating, so services continue to be delivered effectively even as our systems or processes change. We can understand quality across our system by using Enterprise Data Model and Information Architecture.
We can describe the quality of our insights and what decisions they’re suitable for: from rigorous evaluations to inform major investment decisions by ministers, to quick analysis for urgent operational changes. We have invested in Data Capability Development so that we have the skills and culture to maintain quality information and insights.
