Image by stibbons via FlickrPart of my duties as a DBA (that’s database administrator for those of you not in the know) is keeping track of data. It’s a challenging job in some ways and in others it’s in turn frustrating and boring.
One of the bits of data we track is how far our technicians travel every day. Before GPS fleet tracking, this was all done by tediously mapping out the distance between point A and point B. Now all I have to do is to log into the website of the tracking service we use and download a report, pull that data into our database, apply some secret, magic formulas to it and spit out the report that the managers all want to use.
At least the data I get from this service is “clean” data (i.e. data produced by mechanical means). Other data that I have to track and report on is entered manually by data entry personnel some of whom are in India. That gives a whole different twist to human error, let me tell you! They have to transcribe the handwritten service tickets that are faxed in to a fax server daily into a web application.
Combining handwriting that rivals any doctor’s with a fax is not pretty to begin with, but when you throw in non-native English speakers (on both sides of this equation!), well, that data is anything BUT clean! Even numbers manage to get messed up going into the system. I spend hours every day trying to clean up the most common mistakes. It doesn’t help that I see the same ones on a daily basis (see the espresso post). I guess that’s called “job security”. Thankfully, we are at long last talking about going to a paperless solution.
I know I’ll still get some garbage in my data. After all, it will still be humans entering it. We won’t even get away from non-native English speakers since we have technicians who are from Pakistan, India, Jamaica, Columbia, Mexico and Iraq. And, if I’m going to be brutally honest with myself, I’ll probably STILL see expresso spelled wrong. 
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It does sound as if ‘paperless’ is the only way to get out of this mess. Getting those users to accept and use such a new system will however bring its own problems. Good luck.
Sailor — oh yes, it will go a long ways in the right direction. It just means more expense for the company in terms of hardware and software development, and with things a bit “iffy” economy-wise, it may be put off (again!) for a bit before being implemented. Meanwhile, I will struggle along — did I mention “job security”
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