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Data Migration
Data Migration is the process of analysing a business's existing data, wherever it might be held, and extracting, transforming, and loading it into a new system, usually with the aim of streamlining, consolidating and simplifying processes. In recent years, specialist software has been developed for the task. KewBSL is proud to have a partnership arrangement with Talend, who make excellent products. Their data quality, migration and management tools form a fully integrated suite, able to cope with profiling, extracting, transforming and loading data in and out of almost any format you care to name. There are also several approaches to data migration, but perhaps the best known and most trusted is the Practical Data Migration framework devised by Johny Morris, now in its third version, published by the British Computer Society. Kew Business Services employs the basic principles of the PDMv2 approach, and sets out to bridge the gap between the organisation's view of its data and the purely technical aspects of migration. We aim to foresee some of the possible impacts of decisions made on later practice and reporting functions, and hence to avoid problems that might arise in later testing by flushing out potential data quality issues as early as possible and arrive at creative solutions that meet the needs of users.
Some of our recent contracts have involved helping local authorities to remedy mishandled data migration projects and get their case recording systems back on a working basis. The projects had to return to first principles by looking at the initial scope and making an analysis of how the work had diverged from the ideal path, and draw up a plan to get back on track, dealing with the most urgent issues first, but without lapsing into a reactive, fire-fighting approach to the situation. In each case, the result has been a healthy end-product, supporting reporting requirements and the needs of practitioners.
If you would like to know more about Kew Business Services' method and ethos, Colin Lusk blogs about Data Migration and Business Intelligence, with an emphasis on the Social Care arena at The Data Swarm.