Identity Resolution Daily

By the Infoglide Team

WPRI.com: State police crackdown on lottery scams

“‘The clerk opened the cash register and paid our undercover officer $100 dollars,’ said Capt. David Neill of the Rhode Island State Police. ‘On another occasion, our undercover officer presented the $1,000 winning scratch ticket and was told that in fact it was not a winning ticket.’”

naplesnews.com: Editorial: Law enforcement … expanding cooperation, increasing public safety

“The fusion center program aims to make the most of intelligence and technology. That’s collaboration, making teamwork routine rather than something out of the ordinary. That recognizes the age-old truism that crime and criminals know no city or county lines. They move freely to opportunities and hiding places.”

National Terror Alert: Secure Flight Improves Safety And Passenger Delays

“Initially, the Secure Flight program was part of a larger debate about how to identify terrorists consistently while maintaining the privacy of fliers in the post-9/11 world. Once watch list matching was determined to be the correct mechanism, TSA designed the program with privacy and security embedded into its foundation. Secure Flight now uses advanced watch list matching technology and has taken the time to get it right.”

Health IT Buzz: The Evidence for HIT

“Many health care organizations, big and small, public and private, have installed electronic health record systems and are reaping their benefits daily.  Examples include not only national systems like the Veterans Administration and Kaiser Permanente, but regional groups like Geisinger Health System, and individual hospitals like the Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital in Boston, and Lakeland Hospital, a 77-bed facility outside of Omaha Nebraska.  These organizations show that the vision is feasible – health care can be made higher in quality and lower in cost through the best existing HIT.”

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[Post from Infoglide] Entity Resolution Metrics

“In the last post we looked at the problem of measuring the accuracy of entity resolution processes.  As with any accuracy measure, comparing to a known standard of correctness or benchmark is required.  However, even without a benchmark, other measures are also important in evaluating ER outcomes.”

SmartData Collective: MDM: Build or Buy?

“In the paper, I describe five core MDM functions that should drive a deliberate MDM strategy:

1. Data cleansing and correction
2. Metadata
3. Security and access services
4. Data migration
5. Identity resolution”

New York Times: The Rules on Names Could Bend a Little

“Given more precise information at booking, the T.S.A. expects to be able to match more precisely a passenger’s identity against those on the watch list. This should reduce the number of false positives — people who are flagged at security until it can be determined that they are not the person with a similar name who is on a watch list. ‘The Secure Flight watch-list matching process occurs before a passenger even gets to the airport,’ Mr. Leyh said. ‘So if you get a boarding pass, the Secure Flight watch-list matching process is done.’ In other words, you are clear once you get that pass.”

O’Reilly radar: Health gets personal in the cloud

“A Personal Health Record (PHR) is one way that patients can have some control of their own health data, while providing an interoperable platform for sharing relevant clinical data between providers. Healthcare is changing rapidly and there are some important trends worth watching. Healthcare in the near future will be quite different than it is today. Web enabled technology is already changing the way medicine is practiced. As the digital nation comes of age we will see new opportunities, and new challenges, bringing healthcare in America into the 21st century.”

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[Post from Infoglide] The Other Half of Entity Resolution

“In a recent post, Jonathan McDonald quotes one definition of entity resolution: ‘According to Gartner, entity resolution is ‘the capability to resolve multiple labels for individuals, products or other noun classes of data into a single resolved entity when pseudonyms, alias names or other synonym-style constructs exist.’ …While the definition nicely captures the value of ‘first degree’ entity resolution, it falls short by omitting non-obvious relationship detection.”

iHealthBeat: Study: U.S. Lags Behind Many Other Countries in EHR Use

“The study found that 46% of U.S. physicians use electronic health records, up from 28% in 2006. The researchers found that 99% of doctors in the Netherlands use EHRs. Australia, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden and the U.K. also reported EHR adoption rates of 94% or higher. “

data quality PRO: Profit by Data Quality Best Practices

“Insurers use data to manage litigation, detect fraudulent claims and limit financial exposure to claims through reinsurance, but this practice works only when the data is credible. It is no overstatement that sound, profitable property / casualty operations begin – and end – with quality data.”

Federal News Radio: What airline passengers need to know about TSA’s Secure Flight program

“The information is then used ‘behind the scenes’ to match against the No-Fly list. ‘It’s a behind the scenes process,’ said Leyh. ‘If you get to the airport and you have your boarding pass, the Secure Flight part of it, and the watch list matching part of it, is over. It’s done with.’”

information management: Inefficiency as a Standard in Product Information Management

“Managing product information across a large organization consists of much more than making sure prices and descriptions are accurate and consistent. Large manufacturers and retailers employ teams of people tasked with the job of cross checking product data. While the deployment of these teams is a good idea in theory, the process is loaded with inefficiency and errors are all but guaranteed.”

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By Robert Barker, Infoglide Senior VP & Chief Marketing Officer

Civil lawsuits often result in discovery orders from the court to produce every shred of possibly relevant internal communication. The need to comprehend patterns across the resulting vast amount of aggregated data is critical. To help organizations respond to these demands, powerful e-discovery software systems (e.g., see StoredIQ) create data topology maps that identify the relationships between active sources of multiple forms of electronically stored information (ESI).

Reading about how it works made me speculate, “What value might identity resolution bring to e-discovery?” Identity resolution (AKA “entity resolution”) technology has been used to create solutions for a wide range of problems. Most often, this involves creating an understanding about people and their hidden relationships with other people and organizations. Lottery retailer fraud, airline passenger screening, and workers’ compensation are a just a few examples of areas that have benefited from applying this emerging technology.

Since lawsuits revolve around people, it shouldn’t be surprising that technology capturing enriched information about the identities of the actors involved in the suit could greatly illuminate what’s known about the parties involved. For example, imagine if an augmentation of e-discovery with identity resolution could do two things for each person involved in the suit:

1. Automate detection of hidden relationships between the participants and other relevant players by drawing from multiple public and private data sources; and
2. Generate link analyses, including graphical depictions involving the participants and other “entities” like conversation threads, that greatly enrich the litigants’ understanding.

Caveat: I’m not an e-discovery expert. However, based on what we know about identity resolution, I wonder if it’s possible to enhance the results of the e-discovery process?

If you have knowledge and experience in the space, I’d like to hear your thoughts.

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[Post from Infoglide] Social CRM, CDI, and Identity Resolution

“In her well-read book on CDI, Jill Dyché offers a definition of CDI that also seems to describe social CRM. Try reading her definition of CDI, replacing ‘CDI’ with ’social CRM’: CDI is a set of procedures, controls, skills and automation that standardize and integrate customer data originating from multiple sources.”

Concord Monitor: Don’t play games when giving your name

“What do they want? Your date of birth, your gender and your middle initial. This information will be relayed to the TSA, and the TSA will match the information against information maintained by the Terrorist Screening Center (an arm of the FBI that gathers and consolidates watch lists). The theory is that a 12-year-old boy named John X. Doe can more easily be separated from John Z. Doe, who happens to be a 37-year-old man with a history of making bombs, if additional information is collected during the booking process. Once TSA has cleared you, you’ll be issued a boarding pass.”

pressdemocrat.com: Achieving paperless health care

“Medical record-keeping, until recently, relied on rooms full of paper files that were easily misplaced and filled with hurried, handwritten entries that could be hard to read. Electronic records hold orderly, keyboard-entered data that never leaves a hard drive and have the potential to move seamlessly from a primary care provider’s office to an emergency room or specialist’s suite.”

ebizQ: MDM Becoming More Critical in Light of Cloud Computing

[David Linthicum] “We’re moving from complex federated on-premise systems, to complex federated on-premise and cloud-delivered systems.   Typically, we’re moving in these new directions without regard for an underlying strategy around MDM, or other data management issues for that matter.”

Homeland Security: I&A Reconceived: Defining a Homeland Security Intelligence Role

“There are currently 72 fusion centers up and running around the country (a substantial increase from 38 centers in 2006).  I&A has deployed 39 intelligence officers to fusion centers nationwide, with another five in pre-deployment training and nearly 20 in various stages of administrative processing.  I&A will deploy a total of 70 officers by the end of FY 2010, and will complete installation of the Homeland Secure Data Network (HSDN), which allows the federal government to share Secret-level intelligence and information with state and local partners, at all 72 fusion centers.”

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By the Infoglide Team

[Post from Infoglide] Social CRM, CDI, and Identity Resolution

“In her well-read book on CDI, Jill Dyché offers a definition of CDI that also seems to describe social CRM. Try reading her definition of CDI, replacing ‘CDI’ with ’social CRM’:  CDI is a set of procedures, controls, skills and automation that standardize and integrate customer data originating from multiple sources(1).”

Charleston Daily Mail: Former owner of WVa trucking company sentenced

“Leonard Cline formerly owned H & H Trucking. The insurance commissioner says he defrauded the old state workers’ compensation system of more than $500,000 in unpaid premiums, penalties and claims for benefits over about 10 years.”

WTVQ: Eight People Indicted for Insurance Fraud

“The US attorney’s office says the suspects intentionally damaged insured automobiles owned by other conspirators then filed claims.”

KansasCity.com: Push for electronic medical records picks up steam

“With or without health care reform this year, electronic medical records are picking up steam. Recent technological advances are easing the transition for doctors and hospitals, and there’s the little matter of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act. The act, part of last spring’s stimulus package, included billions of dollars to ‘advance the use of health information technology.’ There’s plenty of advancing to do, with one group estimating that less than half the hospitals and only one in five physicians are equipped to fully use electronic records. ‘The United States is far more advanced in grocery store technology than in medical records technology,’ said Steve Lieber, president and chief executive officer of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society in Chicago.”

pnj.com: Man charged with workers’ comp fraud

“Florida Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink announced the arrest today in a news release. In the release, Sink said her Division of Insurance Fraud said Soto is charged with falsifying employment numbers with the intent of avoiding higher workers’ compensation premium payments.”

Federal News Radio: Update: Identity management in the Obama administration

“The alphabet soup of identity management programs from the Bush administration — HSPD-12, TWIC, Real ID, and many more — have gotten little attention publicly during the first nine months of the Obama presidency. But that doesn’t mean identity management has been ignored totally, says one senior administration official.”

London Evening Standard: Lloyd’s chief warns of more insurance fraud

“Lloyd’s of London’s chief executive Richard Ward today warned the deep recession would increase the number of fraudulent claims being made against the insurance market.”

Computerworld: Laptop searches at airports infrequent, DHS privacy report says

“The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s annual privacy report card revealed more details on the agency’s  controversial policy involving searches of electronic devices at U.S. borders. . . . For instance, numbers released in the report indicate that warrantless searches of electronic devices at U.S. borders are occurring less frequently than some privacy and civil rights advocates might have feared. Of the more than 144 million travelers that arrived at U.S. ports of entry between Oct. 1, 2008 and May 5, 2009, searches of electronic media were conducted on 1,947 of them, the DHS said.Of this number, 696 searches were performed on laptop computers, the DHS said. Even here, not all of the laptops received an ‘in-depth’ search of the device, the report states. A search sometimes may have been as simple as turning on a device to ensure that it was what it purported to be. U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents conducted ‘in-depth’ searches on 40 laptops, but the report did not describe what an in-depth search entailed. . . . The report chronicled similar efforts to monitor the privacy implications of a range of projects that privacy groups are also watching. Examples include  Einstein 2.0 network monitoring technology that improves the ability of federal agencies to detect and respond to threats, and the  Real ID identity credentialing program. The DHS’s terror watch list program, its numerous  data mining projects  and the secure flight initiative were also mentioned in the report.”

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[Post from Infoglide] Walking the Privacy/Security Tightrope

“In a post last April, we talked about the privacy/security balance issue for fusion centers and for vendors with supporting technology. Now an article in the Austin Sunday paper about a proposed fusion center again highlights the tension between security and privacy. Each time a fusion center is proposed, the story goes like this…”

information management: MDM for Tough Times: 5 trends to strengthen organizations during recession

[Aaron Zornes] “Enterprise MDM solutions are steadily but rapidly evolving away from data-centric hubs into full-blown application stacks. In other words, MDM is becoming less of a standalone technology infrastructure as the emphasis is increasingly on relationships between domains, user interface and integration with other emerging and adjacent technologies such as RFID, entity analytics and business intelligence.”

InformationWeek: Healthcare Tech: Can BI Help Save The System?

“Healthcare IT is a good place to be these days. While IT budgets in many verticals have been tightly reined, healthcare is enjoying multiple government mandates. This has resulted in an infusion of funds to modernize and integrate IT infrastructure, applications, and data. However, we aren’t starting from a high ground. There are multiple challenges to attaining a 21st century-grade IT environment.”

OCDQ Blog: Adventures in Data Profiling (Part 2)

“The adventures began with the following scenario – You are an external consultant on a new data quality initiative.  You have got 3,338,190 customer records to analyze, a robust data profiling tool, half a case of Mountain Dew, it’s dark, and you’re wearing sunglasses…ok, maybe not those last two or three things – but the rest is true.”

VIDEO: Interview with Secure Flight

TSA Secure Flight Program Director Paul Leyh is interviewed about recent developments.

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By the Infoglide Team

Jeff Jonas: Your Movements Speak for Themselves: Space-Time Travel Data is Analytic Super-Food!

“I’ve seen a lot of data in my life, and I’d like to think I have a decent grip on what can be accomplished with data and analytics.  However, I recently stumbled upon some facts that have radically reshaped my understanding of the world we are living in.  What I thought was years away is already here! Our toes are dangling over the edge of a very different future.”

information management: Styles and Architectures for Master Data Management

“We have conducted a survey aimed at gaining deeper insight into the views and plans of businesses regarding their current or planned MDM initiatives, focused on the styles and architectures adopted or planned to be implemented.”

statesman.com: Police, sheriffs establishing regional intelligence center

“David Carter, an Austin assistant police chief in charge of the intelligence center project, said analysts stationed at the facility also will stitch together information collected by various agencies to create new files on suspects in criminal cases or on suspects they think may be planning to carry out crimes and merit further surveillance.”

Secure Flight on CBS: View story broadcast on August 13

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[Post from Infoglide] Vetting Sharks and Whales

“If you’re not in the casino industry, the title of this post may be meaningless, but for casino managers, “sharks” are the bad guys and “whales” are the good guys. Sharks are people who try to defraud the casino through illegal activities, while whales are the high rollers who are apt to win $20,000 one trip and lost $25,000 the next. If there’s any environment where you’d be motivated as a businessperson to know as much as you can about who you’re dealing with, it’s a casino.”

DATAWARE HOUSING: Business Intelligence and Identity Recognition—IBM’s Entity Analytics

“This article will define master data management (MDM) and explain how customer data integration (CDI) fits within MDM’s framework. Additionally, this article will provide an understanding of how MDM and CDI differ from entity analytics, outline their practical uses, and discuss how organizations can leverage their benefits.”

Workers’Comp Kit Blog: Failure to Pay Workers Compensation Premiums

“A New York asbestos  contractor failed to pay $1.6 Million in workers’ compensation premiums and will serve four years in prison. Upon his release he will be deported to his home country as he is an illegal immigrant… He repeatedly changed the name of his company.”

The TSA Blog: Secure Flight Q&A II

“Each one of these layers alone is capable of stopping a terrorist attack. In combination their security value is multiplied, creating a much stronger, formidable system. A terrorist who has to overcome multiple security layers in order to carry out an attack is more likely to be pre-empted, deterred, or to fail during the attempt.”

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By the Infoglide Team

statesman.com: Austin takes step toward regional law enforcement database

“The Austin City Council voted Thursday to spend up to $200,000 in federal grant money to renovate part of a Texas Department of Public Safety building to house the Austin Regional Intelligence Center, a central databank of information shared by local law enforcement agencies to help with investigations.”

nbc12.com: ‘Secure Flight’ forcing stronger security measures at airports

“With secure flight you’ll need to provide your name exactly as it appears on your identification, your date of birth and gender. The TSA will use that information to keep passengers safe. ‘They are going to have this information and be able to run it against like five different lists like no fly lists ahead of time so they can stop people from boarding that shouldn’t,’ said Mark Turkelson, owner of Travel Leaders.”

resource shelf: Electronic Health Record Resources Added to Special Queries

“The US Department of Health and Human Services defines an electronic health record as ‘An electronic record of health-related information on an individual that conforms to nationally recognized interoperability standards and that can be created, managed, and consulted by authorized clinicians and staff across more than one health care organization.’”

Kimball University: Eight Recommendations for International Data Quality

“For the most part, IT organizations are simply reacting to specific data problems in specific locations, without an overall architecture. Is an overall architecture even possible? This article examines the many challenges surrounding international data quality and concludes with eight recommendations for addressing the problem.”

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