Identity Resolution Daily

By the Infoglide Team

ITBusinessEdge: TIBCO Makes MDM Move, but Where Is Oracle?

“There are still options, Karel writes, including S3 Matching Technologies, Syslore or identity resolution/matching vendor Infoglide Software. But if Oracle plans to just use its own matching engine from the Oracle Customer Hub in Oracle Universal Content Management – ‘that would be a step backwards in my opinion,’ he writes.”

The Austin Chronicle: Drug Trafficking Gets Intense?

“But both FBI Agent Royce Curtain and the DPS’ Tom Ruocco said that communication among law enforcement agencies in the area is good – and, said Ruocco, the addition of a local Austin Regional Intelligence Center (a.k.a. a ‘fusion center‘) would be an asset to getting information needed to detect if there is an increase in local drug trafficking activity. Getting involved in the fusion center is ‘proactive on the city’s part,’ said Ruocco. When there are trends ‘coming forward’ the city will be in a ‘better position to react.’”

Insurance Journal: Kentucky Coal Mine Operator Charged with Workers’ Compensation Fraud

“The indictment alleged that between May 2004 and May 2005, Allen underreported monthly payroll and the number of miners working for her to Kentucky Employers Mutual Insurance. She did this by creating a sham trucking company and placing many of her mining employees on that payroll.”

Liliendahl on Data Quality: Breaking through an open door

“Why are some people always reminding us that this and that must be seen in a business context? Of course everything we do in our professional life within data quality, master data management, business intelligence and so on must be seen in a business context.”

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[Post from Infoglide] Unobtrusive Measures and Identity Resolution

“For decades, researchers in the social sciences have used “unobtrusive measures” as defined originally in a 1966 book by Webb, Campbell, Schwartz, and Sechrest. The idea is to collect and analyze data without disturbing the subjects of the study. For example, instead of surveying subjects to find out how many candy bars they eat each day, the subjects’ garbage is searched and the number of candy wrappers is tallied.”

Information Management: TIBCO Software Acquires Netrics

“Gartner Research VP Andrew White highlighted the continued frenzy of acquisitions in the master data management space in a blog on the latest acquisition. ‘… this new acquisition highlights the dwindling set of data quality tools for master data management (and other interested) vendors to partner with, and/or acquire,’ White wrote. ‘The acquisition seems logical, and good, for packaged MDM (TIBCO offers one) though; but as the music dies down, who will be left standing without a partner…’”

Workers’ Comp Kit Blog: Business Owners and Secretary Facing Prison For Lying to Wiggle Out of High Premiums

“The Ventura County District Attorney’s office recently arraigned the owners, along with the company’s secretary, on five felony counts of insurance premium fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit insurance fraud. According to authorities, the three lied to their insurer to save an estimated $500,000, making it appear their employees were more experienced than they actually were.”

SmartDataCollective: MDM Can Challenge Traditional Development Paradigms

“Dealing with imperfect data has traditionally been unacceptable because it slowed down processing; ignoring it or returning an error was a best practice. The difference about MDM development is the focus on data content (and value-based) processing.  The whole purpose MDM is to deal with all data, including the unacceptable stuff. It assumes that the data is good enough.”

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By the Infoglide Team

Forrester Blog: TIBCO jumps onto MDM M&A train with acquisition of data matching vendor Netrics

[Rob Karel] “Netrics seemed the most likely target for Oracle to replace Identity Systems with its small footprint and relatively low acquisition cost, but now with Netrics off the market, Oracle should consider other matching vendors such as S3 Matching Technologies, Syslore or identity resolution/matching vendor Infoglide Software.”

msnbc: What is TSA’s Secure Flight Program?

“Secure Flight launched in August, is currently in a phase-in stage, and is intended to be fully in place by November 2010 for all flights leaving from and/or arriving in the U.S. Essentially, the airlines and booking engines will collect your full name, gender and birth date when you book your flight and send that info to the TSA, which will then compare the information against the no-fly list. The name you give when you book must synch up with your full name as shown on the government-issued ID you use when checking in for your flight.”

Michael Power: Can Governments Force Patient Data into EHRs?

“As a brief and somewhat simplistic aside, ‘electronic health record’ is a term often incorrectly used to describe both EHRs and EMRs. There is a distinction between the two and it is an important one. Hospitals and physicians use EMRs. EMRs, along with other databases, are expected to feed into a longitudinal ‘virtual’ patient record which is to be accessible across providers and institutions and which is properly referred to as the EHR.”

Security Management: Terror Threat Tracking System Shares Thousands of Tips from Locals, FBI Says

“The eGuardian system is one of the core technological elements of the Information Sharing Environment (ISE) established by congressional mandate in response to the intelligence failures that preceded the 9-11 attacks. In a typical scenario, a law enforcement agency will either generate its own SAR or field one from the public.”

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[Post from Infoglide] Garbage In, Garbage Out? Not Necessarily.

“One of the oldest phrases in computer science seems to still be in vogue. ‘Garbage in, garbage out’ (GIGO) is a term coined during the early days of the computing industry. It pointed out that the value of computer systems of the day were entirely dependent upon their input data. No amount of processing power could produce a right answer from bad data. Fast forward many decades…”

Formtek: Technology: Data Consistency via Master Data Management

“The concept of MDM is a good one, and many companies have piloted MDM projects over the last few years.  Now research firm Baseline Consulting  says that many companies are beginning to move beyond their MDM pilot systems.  Baseline Consulting co-founder Jill Dyche said that ‘the fact that data quality, data governance, and data enrichment processes may accompany an MDM initiative make it all the more attractive as an enterprise solution.’”

HSToday: DHS Intelligence Needs More Oversight

“The success of the fusion center program,” said the report, “ is dependent on the infrastructure that enables state and local fusion centers to have access to each other’s information as well as to the appropriate federal databases. The fusion center program and the Nationwide Suspicious Activity Report Initiative (NSI) rely on the concept of shared space architecture, where the fusion centers replicate data from their systems to an external server under their control, making the decision on what to share totally under their control.”

HealthITExchange: EHR implementation a foregone conclusion, ONC says

“No matter how the rules shake out, EHR implementation in the United States is a foregone conclusion, Blumenthal said. He sees the skills of collecting, using, searching and sharing health data electronically becoming part of the assumed professional skill set for health care providers, just as using a stethoscope is now. In the next five to 10 years, hospitals will use their robust EHR systems to recruit physicians; solo physicians who succeed in implementing EHR will sell their practices more easily when the time comes, but solo physicians still using paper will not be able to sell their practices at all.”

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By the Infoglide Team

Fraud Magazine: Suspicious Activity Reports

“Ultimately, the defendant admitted making numerous deposits of less than $10,000 each to avoid triggering bank filing of the Currency Transaction Reports (CTRs) required for all activity involving five figures or more. In a single month, he made nearly 30 such deposits at a number of banks, totaling more than $260,000. Later, in almost 20 transactions at various branches of a single bank, he deposited an additional $185,000. That bank promptly filed a SAR detailing how the mortgage broker had deposited into his personal and business accounts sums ranging from $9,000 to $9,800.”

GCN: State fusion centers look to expand beyond counterterrorism efforts

“The development of fusion centers has faced some significant challenges. First and foremost, the centers must overcome the practical challenge of integrating data. Even in the same state, you can have 500 police departments using different software to manage their [computer-aided design] and intelligence needs,” Serrao said. And generally that data is saved in different formats.”

Community of Experts: Future of MDM – Master Policy Management?

“However, as the thought processes for establishing a business case for MDM mature, we are starting to see where the desire for the unified view is not completely dependent on an instantiation of a single consolidated repository. Instead, in these situations the business needs are supported by the availability of master data services implementing consistent information policies across an extended enterprise… the consistent application of policies can be done both in the presence of a unified repository or as a federated collection of common repositories!”

Worker’s Compensation Law Center: IL: Chiropractor, Physician Among Three Defendants Indicted in Alleged $1 Million Health Care Fraud Scheme

“As part of the scheme, Minnis allegedly forged and caused others to forge physicians’ signatures on various documents falsely representing that services, treatment, physical therapy and/or testing had been provided, ordered or supervised by medical doctors. Minnis allegedly forged the doctors’ signatures, and caused them to sign reports without having done patient exams, knowing that Workers’ Comp would not accept a chiropractor’s opinions or reports as medical evidence to support patients’ claims.”

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[Post from Infoglide] Recession Driving Insurance Fraud

“A recent post on McClatchy’s blog attributes growing insurance fraud to the recession: A recent survey of 37 state insurance-fraud bureaus by the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud found that the recession “appears to have had a significant impact on the incidence of fraud” last year. On average, the bureaus reported increases in case referrals and new investigations in all 15 categories of fraud the survey covers.”

Liliendahl on Data Quality: What is Data Quality anyway?

“If we look at what data quality tools today actually do, they in fact mostly support you with automation of data profiling and data matching, which is probably only some of the data quality challenges you have.”

Voice of America: Murder of US Consulate Workers in Mexico Signals New Phase in Violence

“Scott Stewart, vice president of tactical intelligence for Austin, Texas-based analysis firm Stratfor, says the killings might have been related to a recently announced U.S. plan to increase cooperation with Mexican law enforcement agencies. ‘We believe that it is likely related to a decision last month to start working more closely with the Mexican government by the Americans,” said Scott Stewart. “They were going to put some personnel into a joint fusion center in Juarez.’”

Coalition Against Insurance Fraud: False claims act for Maryland

“The Coalition issued a statement supporting the bill, saying it would serve as a deterrent and a powerful incentive for medical providers to have strong compliance programs and to “play by the rules.” False claims acts help detect fraudulent schemes that otherwise might not ever be known because they allow insiders to blow the whistle and initiate civil actions.”

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[Post from Infoglide] Architectures for Entity Resolution-Part 2

“In the last post we examined how entity resolution (ER) systems are actually implemented, starting with the most basic merge/purge process and heterogeneous join systems. Both of these approaches focus on collecting equivalent references from among the sources provided, either as a large batch of references in a single file, or through queries against a federation of databases…”

The Foundry: Thwarting the Next Terrorist Attack: Are We More Prepared?

“Knowing what we know now, would the U.S. be able to stop another attack like that of Christmas Day 2009? This is certainly the question on the minds of many Americans today.  It is also one that Jamie McIntyre, veteran journalist and blogger for Military.com, had the opportunity to ask of Rand Beers, Under Secretary for National Protection and Programs Directorate from DHS, at a Heritage Foundation National Security Bloggers Luncheon.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub8K6ApOnGE

Perceptive Information Strategies: Informatica and the Identity Opportunity

“In the middle of all of this are software providers, primarily IBM InfoSphere Identity Insight Solutions, Infoglide (which is providing software for the DHS) and Informatica… Identity recognition and resolution systems enable organizations to use data matches to gain a better understanding of identity across multiple systems. This could include not just individual identities but also networks and relationships: that is, who people know and how they are connected.”

Managing Automation: The MDM Supplier Market Gets a Little Smaller

“It’s been a heady couple of months in the IT infrastructure market, as any independent company that wasn’t tied down seemed to be swept up in a whirlwind of M&A activity. Independent data integration specialist Informatica, a 4,000-customer company in business since 1993, announced in January that it had acquired Siperian for $130 million.”

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By the Infoglide Team

tdwi: Informatica Ups the MDM Stakes

“Until now, Informatica’s MDM strategy has largely been peripheral. It had most of the tools (e.g., data integration, data quality, data profiling, and identity resolution) but tended to partner with bigger or best-of-breed players to promote MDM-oriented offerings or services… What’s risky about the acquisition of Siperian is that it imperils Informatica’s existing MDM partnerships (especially with Oracle Corp.) and compromises its neutrality pitch.”

GCN: Fusion centers to be assessed

“Fusion centers will conduct self-assessments, followed by a gap analysis and peer reviews, according to officials at the National Fusion Center Association, a new not-for-profit organization based in Alexandria, Va., that represents the 72 fusion centers. The assessments are meant to determine their progress in reaching baseline capabilities. Those capabilities were created by a federal advisory committee that also wrote the original guidelines for those centers.”

WorkersCompensation.com: NYSIF Announces 154 Arrests

“Recent significant cases resulting in millions of dollars in savings to NYSIF have included claimants who receive benefits while operating businesses or remain employed in other capacities, the most prevalent type of workers’ comp. fraud. Other cases involve premium fraud, the most costly type, in construction, asbestos abatement and other contracting, including investigations in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Labor, the U.S. Postal Inspector, and local labor racketeering bureaus. Still other cases involve fraudulent provider billing.”

SignalScape: Experts Ponder Both Sides of Border Security

“The DHS has also tested mobile identification systems and created an information sharing plan with the Department of Justice which allows officials to search for criminal records. Art Macius, chief of staff at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) added that organizations such as his and the DHS must also share information with their international counterparts. This international cooperation includes efforts such as cargo screening for commercial aircraft though efforts such as the Secure Flight program. Macius said that by this spring, the program will work with U.S. airlines to screen baggage and air cargo, and that the coverage will extend to international carriers by the end of the year.”

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[Post from Infoglide] Is MDM Dead?

“Andrew White of Gartner recently posed a question about whether master data management (MDM) is dead. He didn’t actually suggest that the demise of master data management is imminent. He was challenging whether our current terminology adequately clarifies the current reality about MDM and associated product areas.”

Inside the Biz: The Good News about MDM Market Consolidation

[Jill Dyche] “Last year, Informatica’s MDM story verged on the schizophrenic as the company simultaneously advocated a “roll your own” approach to MDM using various software components while at the same time making investments in both Siperian and rival Initiate Systems. Siperian fills in some significant voids in Informatica’s MDM capabilities, most notably hierarchy management and transaction integration—updating the golden record in real time.”

porter: FAQ Secure Flight

“What is Secure Flight and what does it do? Secure Flight is a behind the scenes program that streamlines the watch list matching process. It will improve the travel experience for all passengers, including those who have been misidentified in the past.”

Computerworld: Meeting an Olympic-size security challenge

“First is the classic ‘entity resolution‘ challenge. Information about any individual is likely going to be scattered across a range of databases. While one database may contain a red-flag item — a pending drug charge or a secondary connection to a known terrorist — another database may not. The challenge is bringing this information together to create a single record — a ’single version of the truth’ — about an individual or entity.”

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By Mike Shultz, Infoglide Software CEO

Andrew White of Gartner recently posed a question about whether master data management (MDM) is dead. He didn’t actually suggest that the demise of master data management is imminent. He was challenging whether our current terminology adequately clarifies the current reality about MDM and associated product areas.

Certainly the terms describing many markets and types of products are being associated with MDM. Jackie Roberts of DATAForge pointed out that the definition of MDM now seems to include “data integrity, data quality, entity resolution, matching, data integration, governance, metrics and analysis.”

While entity resolution was mentioned in her list, our obsessive focus on entity resolution (aka identity resolution) leads to the conclusion that, rather than being subsumed, its role is growing. Wayne Eckerson at TDWI seems to agree that identity resolution is a critical component of the recent MDM acquisitions. In his post about the acquisitions by Informatica and IBM of Siperian and Initiate Systems, respectively, he described the two transactions this way:

“You could say that Siperian is mostly MDM, but with identity resolution and other capabilities, whereas Initiate is mostly about identity resolution, but with MDM and other capabilities.”

Identity resolution is becoming an integral part of many product areas. Within MDM itself, creating a single-entity view is best done with an identity resolution engine. Data mining is greatly enhanced by the addition of entity resolution. Dan Power of Hub Solution Designs wrote about how key identity resolution is to data matching. We’ve talked about how social CRM can resolve identities of individuals across multiple disparate data sources using identity resolution, as well as “rationalize multiple variations and errors and anomalies that block finding existing customers within their systems”.

Although identity resolution technology has been years in the making, it has only recently risen into the consciousness of most analysts and customers. Because of its ability to bring enhanced clarity to ambiguous data, advanced identity resolution is now beginning to have a significant impact across many data-centered disciplines.

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