Small incident, small village, big insights

Monday morning, after dreadful terrorist attacks around the world.

Walking in a small village, noticing someone lying on the floor.  Possibly a drunk person.

Walking back, now there is a small crowd, providing some encouragement to the person and asking questions.

I join the crowd and ask the person how s/he feels.  S/he looks back and asks for us to call his/her partner.  

One of the crowd member says we have to wait for an ambulance to come.  The person in question reacts angrily.  Other members of the crowd say it is better for this person to let the paramedics check him/her.

I offer to buy a coffee, the person refuses.  It seems we are not listening to the individual in question. 

And then the interesting bit (that motivated this post):  Someone else joins the crowd and asks if we can give a mobile phone number.  So the paramedics can call directly.

At this point I leave the crowd.  Not because I become disinterested.  But because the crowd dissolves.  The person walks out, asks to be alone, no apparent injury noticed.  

But also because now all of us feel we need to stop being a crowd and become what we are: individuals.

The paranoid data seeking state in which we live in (you can check my previous post) breaks crowds, dissolves masses, it can make us rethink our own values and walk away. 

Yes, health/ social services needed a mobile phone, they need the individual to stand out from the crowd.  My previous experience with health and social services in the country where I live is that data requests will come after the individual(s).  

A log has to be created.  A record needs to exist of the incident.  So that someone in distress (or with criminal behavior) enters our sophisticated data systems. So that someone who also reported the incident can be contacted later.

I am not an expert on health or social services.  But what I see is that data is taking over common sense, if it has not done so already.  

Addiction to data collection

I was recently attending a planning meeting outside university.

The aim was to provide some input as a user in a project to establish a new public service to be provided by private and public organisations.

It felt as if we were having a good discussion, and I was feeling somehow proud to have been able to convey some key ideas on how the new service should run.

And then the question that unconsciously I was dreading to hear came:

• So what sort of data are we going to collect from service users? 

Followed by its natural sibling:

• How can we make sure that the data collection is not intrusive? 

We live in a time where data is the uninvited but essential guest.  Like the lost relative that always shows up to spoil the party.

We have become addicted to data.  And to collect it.  But all in an almost secret manner.  

We need data to keep a trail, to know who is doing what, to infer why they did or did not turn up. 

And we act like the browser cookies. 

I am sure a good number of jobs have been created in for profit and non-profit organisations in order to manage the data.  In these jobs essential requirements are the ability to capture and analyse data, followed by the ability to sum up data and present it to key decision makers.  

I hope the data analysts that are reading this post forgive me.  Nothing wrong with the job.  What seems to be wrong in my view is the addiction processes that keep feeding this and other jobs.

So the discussion in the meeting turned into a kind of design of how the management of data was to proceed.  Naturally (yes, naturally) then the next question that followed was:

• How can we capture the data using existing systems?

Because yes, there could be more than one system that already captures some data.  And we don't want to duplicate efforts.  We cannot afford to do so.  

Listening to the last question, I almost jumped onto the conversation to say that I had a few ideas about databases and information systems.  

But I stayed silent.  

Because it takes a supplier to keep the addiction going on.  

All I can think now to tell my students is that if data emerges, let it emerge, but don't force its collection or analysis.  If there is someone who is keen to collect data, then there is a hidden motive. Try to get to the bottom of this.  Try to block the cookies if you see what I mean.  

The data to be collected should serve a much higher purpose than just keep a memory of what goes on.