There are any number of clichés around the word “truth.”
The truth hurts, to tell the truth, truth in advertising, truth is stranger than fiction.
In IT, there’s one big one: The single version of the truth.
It means that if you clean up a database or data warehouse by removing repetitive data, there should be only one set of number or text that can be used for analytics and decision-making.
But Gartner vice-president of research Andrew White wonders in a blog suggests there’s no such thing as a single version of the truth.
What we mean by the phase is can we at least agree on a set of truths as a foundation on which people can make their own interpretations.
However, White also makes the point where organizations will find the truth is a trickier questions. He suggests that information governance plays a role. and asks if organizations should focus on governing data in the warehouse (which, he notes, is the realm of IT) or on information in core business systems (which is the realm of the business user).
If organizations do the latter, he suggests, it may be more effect.
Read the blog, ponder it and, hopefully, as Shakespeare once said, eventually the truth will out.
