How to Ensure Data Consistency and Quality by Sally El Hadidi via @Datafloq

Poor data quality negatively impacts your company on many levels. Not only does it lead to bad decision-making, but it can be costly as well.

Some great suggestions. My own suggestions are:
Make sure that data definitions are consistent - e.g. is a customer number the same format in all sources?

• Do accurate and detailed documentation to map the data in each system and how to join it together - you might be surprised just how difficult that is.
• Use validation everywhere to make sure that the quality of the data is good everywhere.  e.g. use drop down boxes or master tables to make sure that all fields that could be used to group or classify are a set of standard values.

How to succeed in a career in data governance by Kayla Matthews via @infomgmt

If you want to transition to a data governance career, it's possible to do so and embark on a path that leads to lasting satisfaction and success. Here are some practical steps you should take.

Great list of pointers from Kayla that are a good starting point. I would add that looking at any job adverts, job specs or any other relevant information would be helpful and should be able to give you a good starting point.

How AI, IoT and 5G are accelerating digital transformation by Nathan Sykes via @infomgmt

Industry 4.0 was already underway before AI, 5G and the IoT became household buzzwords. But now that they're here, they're accelerating the rate of transformation like never before.

I definitely think this is starting to build up toward some really exciting possibilities in the area of Industry 4.0

Recent Acquisitions in the Business Intelligence field together with a longer view list

Within the past week, we’ve seen the acquisitions of the two biggest players in the modern BI landscape, Looker and Tableau. And if you broaden your view to the entire analytics tech stack, it’s bigger: here are the major acquisitions over the past year:

• Stitch. Acquired by Talend on 11/7/2018 for $60m.
• Alooma. Acquired by Google on 2/19/19 for an undisclosed amount.
• Periscope. Acquired by Sisense on 5/14/19 for an undisclosed amount.
• Looker. Acquired by Google on 6/6/19 for $2.6b.
• Tableau. Acquired by Salesforce on 6/10/19 for $15.7b.

Wow - who is next?? It's obviously big business.

Poor data quality causing majority of artificial intelligence projects to stall by Bob Violino via @infomgmt

Nearly eight out of 10 organizations using AI and ML report that projects have stalled, and 96 per cent of these companies have run into problems with data quality, says a new study.

This is a reason for the failure of many different techniques in many different projects. It is absolutely VITAL that you have good quality data in your systems and that there is good referential integrity across all joins.

The Stanford Cyber Policy Centre report on securing the integrity of future American elections by Michael McFaul via @FSIStanford

The Stanford Cyber Policy Centre released a report (pdf here) late last week that details Russian interference in the 2016 election and makes recommendations on how to secure the integrity of future elections.

I think if you only want to read the summary of recommendations you can go to page 7 in the PDF.

Cloud customers, not providers, responsible for most cyber security incidents by Bob Violino via @infomgmt

Cybersecurity incidents in the cloud are most often caused by a cloud customer’s employees, rather than by the provider themselves, according to a recent report from security company Kaspersky Lab.

In many ways, this is great news for the cloud providers as it reinforces their assertions that data is very secure in their environment.

Keep Your A.I. Buzzwords Straight by Jonathan Vanian via @FortuneMagazine

Reinforcement learning. Deep learning. Machine learning. Here are some definitions.

I think it's worth a bookmark or printing out.

Google’s Duplex Uses A.I. to Mimic Humans (Sometimes) by Brian X. Chen and Cade Metz via @nytimestech

In the free Google Duplex service, bots call restaurants and make reservations. These bots are pretty impressive, except for when the bot is actually a person.

This is really interesting and definitely the way things will develop going forward.

Microsoft wants to apply AI ‘to the entire application developer lifecycle by @EPRO’ via @VentureBeat

“If you look at the entire application development lifecycle, from code review to testing to continuous integration, and so on, there are opportunities at every single stage for machine learning to help,” says Amanda Silver, a director of Microsoft’s Developer Division.

Wow - this sounds amazing and I can't wait for it to mature and come into its own.

42 countries adopt new OECD principles on AI by/via @OECD

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and six partner countries formally adopted the first set of intergovernmental policy guidelines on AI, agreeing to uphold international standards to ensure AI systems are “designed to be robust, safe, fair and trustworthy.”

The document, described as a “political commitment,” is aimed at governments and offers general principles but no details or agreement on how to achieve them.

So glad that these countries have started to follow the guidelines and I really hope others start to follow them too. There is a link in the article so that you can download the entire guidelines.

Facebook’s A.I. Whiz Now Faces the Task of Cleaning It Up. Sometimes That Brings Him to Tears by Cade Metz and Mike Isaac via @nytopinion

And sometimes that brings him to tears.

I can understand that - he has one hell of a job on his hands that has got to be a moving target.