Tuesday, August 21. 2007

URISA: Data Audit

URISA's sessions are organized into 9 tracks and I'm trying to attend different tracks during the event. This morning was Management (See Body of Knowledge). This afternoon I hit Tools (3D GIS: History, Trends and Future Capabilities) and Data (Fundamental Data Considerations).

The 3D session played off a workshop held on Monday which I understand addressed more of my questions: what do we do now to get started and be in sync with what's to come. This session, with speakers from Oracle and Harvard University Grad School of Design focused on 3D in the database and BIM/GIS standards efforts. That was a bit theorectical for me, but clearly spoke to the needs of many in the audience who were not aware of the efforts to tie CAD/GIS together in this way.

The data session first addressed a topic about which I knew little: the data audit. The story was from Randal Krejcarek of Delray Beach, FL (pop: 65,000) and the steps the city followed to create a single centralized master address database. He offered four key steps and I've ask him to provide a detailed article for Directions:

- inventory (who has what data, from when, for what purpose, how did they collect it, etc.)
- rank the databases found based on accuracy and accessibility
- build the repository off the "best" database, referencing the others
- maintain the database

The other data talk was from longtime Directions contributor Kevin Coleman, who focused on data security. He told many scary stories and shared the fact that most data breaches are by folks on the inside! Mostly though he noted how a combination of physical (RFID cards, for example) and information security (multiple challenges to access data) are the best bets to keep data safe. He left us with three key take aways:

- data in under continuous attack
- datasets which may seem harmless if stolen alone, when paired with other data can cause significant liabilities
- use multiple datasets to enhance security

[Disclosure: URISA covered my lodging for this event.]

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