This is nothing new. I've spent the last 20 years trying to convince my GoC clients that the technology you slap on top of your data cannot fix missing or bad data. The need to collect/create the right data, then cleanse, transform, integrate, and provision it so it's optimized for downstream use has always been foundational. Whether it's basic BI reporting, data mining, or training AI models, this is an immutable truth. Each new generation of data transformation tools makes this easier, but it still requires a significant amount of real work by technical and business SMEs.
There’s another way of reading your examples. The fragmentation you’re describing—traceability a patchwork, food waste unmeasured, supply chain visibility incomplete—isn’t evidence that we haven’t collected enough data. It’s a map of where the institutional boundaries are. The information exists, in pieces, held by actors who each see their slice and have no incentive to share the rest.
A category management analogy is instructive. The data for shelf optimisation existed before category management arrived. What was missing wasn’t information—it was a position from which to act on it, occupied by someone whose incentives aligned with the whole system rather than one side of the boundary. Building a national data platform doesn’t create that position. It creates a new place to deposit the fragments.
Retail returns run at $900 billion annually in the US, growing despite better reverse logistics, because the information required to resolve them sits across a boundary no existing actor can see from—and no existing actor has the incentive to create one that would. I’ve been developing the longer argument here: https://thepuzzleanditspieces.substack.com/p/where-the-costs-are
It always makes me nervous when someone talks about needing a "national" anything.
Have you seen what gubbermint does? Especially national gubbermint?? They're frighteningly inept and I think I'd rather not have them controlling any aspect of our food supply.
In engineering school during the computer class, the teacher used to say : « Garbage in, garbage out. » The quality of the data is one of the most cricital piece of information.
This is nothing new. I've spent the last 20 years trying to convince my GoC clients that the technology you slap on top of your data cannot fix missing or bad data. The need to collect/create the right data, then cleanse, transform, integrate, and provision it so it's optimized for downstream use has always been foundational. Whether it's basic BI reporting, data mining, or training AI models, this is an immutable truth. Each new generation of data transformation tools makes this easier, but it still requires a significant amount of real work by technical and business SMEs.
Well said
There’s another way of reading your examples. The fragmentation you’re describing—traceability a patchwork, food waste unmeasured, supply chain visibility incomplete—isn’t evidence that we haven’t collected enough data. It’s a map of where the institutional boundaries are. The information exists, in pieces, held by actors who each see their slice and have no incentive to share the rest.
A category management analogy is instructive. The data for shelf optimisation existed before category management arrived. What was missing wasn’t information—it was a position from which to act on it, occupied by someone whose incentives aligned with the whole system rather than one side of the boundary. Building a national data platform doesn’t create that position. It creates a new place to deposit the fragments.
Retail returns run at $900 billion annually in the US, growing despite better reverse logistics, because the information required to resolve them sits across a boundary no existing actor can see from—and no existing actor has the incentive to create one that would. I’ve been developing the longer argument here: https://thepuzzleanditspieces.substack.com/p/where-the-costs-are
It always makes me nervous when someone talks about needing a "national" anything.
Have you seen what gubbermint does? Especially national gubbermint?? They're frighteningly inept and I think I'd rather not have them controlling any aspect of our food supply.
In engineering school during the computer class, the teacher used to say : « Garbage in, garbage out. » The quality of the data is one of the most cricital piece of information.