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AI re-writing historical image data

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 Like many people, we have a collection of old photos of various ancestors.  Typical of the time, they were probably taken on box-brownie cameras or something equivalent that produced slightly blurry photos that are typical of candid photos of the time. My brother has been using an AI image tool to clean them up and colourise the black and white ones. Generally, the tool has done a remarkable job at cleaning up some of the images.  It's also done a great job of colourising some of them, so they look a lot more interesting. However, there are two important issues from a data management perspective that point to AI changing or making up history that may not be correct. Firstly, one of the photos shows a young version of one of my uncles at the seaside for a day-outing around 1934.  The original black and white image shows that he has two bottles of what I know was home-made lemonade in those old glass drink bottles that were re-sealable with a marble and a lever-action...
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Creative error messages

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 I just got this when trying to update a screen ... At least it didn't say start at 10,000
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Do we have a right to anonymous cash transactions?

 I was listening to people talking on the radio about digital currency and the demise of cash.   There seemed to be an implication that people wanting to retain cash were luddites in a similar category as climate change skeptics, anti-vaxxers, and old people.  Digital currency is just going to push the old way out of existence, and you'd better just accept it. It got me thinking about the benefits of cash.   One of which is the ability to make an anonymous transaction.   You go into a take-away, pick a drink from the fridge, take it to the counter, and pay.  No record anywhere that you just bought a drink. In the digital currency world, there could be any amount of data being collected about that same transaction.  By comparison all the revelations by Edward Snowdon about government data collection may pale to insignificance.   For example, the government might now know: where you were at a particular time and date what you jus...
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I got caught in the "you don't actually own the data" trap

An interesting thing happened to me today that reinforced the "you think it's yours but it's not really" principle. Now I'm a long-term subscriber to Audible audio books and I have hundreds in my library. Yesterday I was at the gym listening to a book that I had downloaded to my phone.  It stopped and gave me an error.  Nothing I could do would get it playing again.   There was a little padlock symbol next to the book in the library.   There were a few marked like that. Today I contacted Audible to ask what happened, and they said that I downloaded those books when they were offered as free downloads, but now they aren't free, so they've taken them back. I asked if there was any notification in advance and they said no. I asked how I can tell that they plan to take some of my books back and they said you can't.  It just happens.  They just reach into your bookshelf and remove them. There are implications here for data management. It reinforces the...
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Welcome

 Hi all, I’ve been working in the Australian data management arena for a long time, and I’ve found that while a lot of data management books, blogs, and papers exist, many of then don’t resonate with me working in the Australian marketplace.  This is usually for a variety of reasons, but mainly because I read them and think “this sounds good, but it won’t work where I’m currently working”. This blog is an attempt to look at data management issues from an Australian context, from someone who has been in the trenches fighting the data management battles for a long time.   I’ve been in organisations with large Data Management sections and others where data management is an unknown concept.   I’ve worked in both the Public Service and industry, and I’ve seen data management implementations run from the most officious to the most efficient (and I’m not necessarily implying that the public service side of things owns the “officious”).  I’ve experienced the impact of c...
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The cyclic nature of data management

      One perspective I have from a long career is that the popularity of data management is cyclic - sometimes you’ll be working in a large team of data managers and other times you’re in a room by yourself. These days we seem to be in that part of the cycle where we are losing people and not getting them replaced.   The reason for this is may be that management think that “things are going ok at the moment”; “we don’t have any real data problems”; and “boy, those application development teams are behind their schedule and they are complaining that they need more programmers”. As a result, management attention and resources are probably being directed to the application development teams. Practically, there’s not much you can do to combat this. Cynically, the only way to get the cycle to turn upwards in your favour is to be opportunistic and wait for the inevitable data disaster.   Even then, this might not actually be apparent to senior management, so you have...
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