Why Do Data Analytics Efforts Fail? ‘Islands of Information,’ MET Expert Ed Matthews Says

As both a senior IT security engineer at Mass General Brigham (formerly Partners HealthCare) and a part-time lecturer in BU MET’s Department of Computer Science, Ed Matthews has years of experience designing and supporting security tools and applications and loves the challenge of tracing data and resolving high-level issues. Matthews was quoted in a recent CIO Magazine article for his perspective on the circumstances that commonly find root and lead to inefficient and failed applications of data analytics.

Firms don’t always have the necessary foundational tools to be successful in their data analytics efforts, Matthews told CIO, part of the IDG Communications network. Organizations often struggle due to unclean or misidentified data sets as well as good-old-fashioned user error, leading to predictable yet unexpected difficulties.

“They have islands of information, and they have parts of their companies doing some of the same types of things,” he was quoted. “These companies think they have decent programs until they look at frameworks and they realize they don’t.”

Moreover, many organizations don’t have the right foundational technologies to enable their objectives, as they chase tools that might promise big dividends yet aren’t good fits for their own needs, Matthews says. Or, conversely, they stick with tools that don’t enable growth because they didn’t devise a solid strategy from the start.

Matthews points to the approach taken by a charity he once worked for as an example of a good strategy for their data program’s foundational pieces. The organization committed to appropriately funding its analytics program, created an analytics team and assigned a senior vice president to lead it.

“They were ahead of the curve, they didn’t lock into particular data sets and ignore other data but were constantly thinking of new ways to check their data, and they were always considering new technologies,” Matthews says. “In this case, the CIO had the foresight to get the team created and hire the right person to lead the team.”