Identity Resolution Daily

Identity Resolution Daily Links 2010-05-29

[Post from Infoglide] Reference Linking Methods - Part 1

“In the last few posts, we reviewed the basic architectures used to implement entity resolution (ER) systems.  Although this gives us the big picture at the systems level, ER really takes place at the reference (record) level where the system must ultimately decide whether two references are for the same or for different real-world objects, i.e. to link or not to link.  In this series I’ll discuss some of the most common methods for making these linking decisions.”

P&C National Underwriter: New York City Listed As No.1 In Staged Auto Accident Fraud

“NYAAIF noted that the New York-based Insurance Information Institute reported that fraud and abuse in the New York no-fault system accounts for roughly 20 percent of every no-fault claim paid—or about $1,561 per claim. Spread across the state, that amounted to nearly $230 million in ‘fraud taxes’ in 2009, according to the Alliance.”

Bank Info Security: 6 Signs of Business Loan Fraud

Three states (Wyoming, Nevada and Delaware) do not require any proof of identification to set up a business. Another 26 states allow a limited liability corporation (LLC) to be set up without showing beneficial ownership. ‘When banks try to cross-reference within their own business customers, they’ll find the connection,’ she says. ‘But when they distribute it across several banks, it’s not clearly visible. It’s hard to do pattern relationships because banks don’t compare notes, so that’s how [the fraudsters] dilute and avoid detection.’”

GovMonitor: Homeland Security Outlines 2010 Summer Travel Tips

“The Secure Flight watch-list matching process occurs before a passenger even gets to the airport so if you get a boarding pass, the Secure Flight matching process is done. In other words, you are clear once you get that pass.”

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By the Infoglide Team

Consumer Traveler: TSA announces Secure Flight will be complete within a month

“Speaking at U.S. Travel Association’s Pow Wow conference to encourage foreign tourism, Leyh noted that TSA is about to complete their mission of taking back the watchlist matching. This is part of maintaining control of the actual list for security and of relieving the airlines of the responsibility of performing the matches prior to allowing passengers to board.”

iHealthBeat: Reform Law Calls for Use of New Technology To Fight Medicare Fraud

“At the report’s release, HHS and Department of Justice officials said a new CMS program called the Center for Program Integrity would help implement the anti-fraud provisions of the reform law by using sophisticated techniques to uncover improper payments. Officials said CMS also would work with the private health care sector to combat fraud.”

Journal of Online Business: What Is There To Learn About Cloud Computing?

“One big advantage to a small business of accessing only what is needed at the time that it is needed is that initial capital outlay for end user licenses, individual work stations, and the like is considerably reduced. Thus there is little reason to outright purchase something that is merely required for special circumstances, monthly, or year end reports.”

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By the Infoglide Team

Media Health Leaders Media: Detroit Doc Gets Six Years for Medicare Fraud

“Myint, of Bloomfield Hills, MI, was also ordered to pay more than $3.1 million in restitution, jointly with co-defendants, and to serve two years of supervised release following his prison term. Terrence Hicks, of Jackson, MI, the patient recruiter, was ordered to pay more than $4.9 million in restitution, jointly with co-defendants, and to serve three years of supervised release following his prison term.”

AolTravel: Is the No-Fly List Working?

“‘The TSA is hoping to smooth glitches with the new Secure Flight program — a system by which the ‘TSA will conduct uniform prescreening of passenger information against federal government watchlists,’ according to an official statement. ‘The TSA is taking over this responsibility from the airlines.’ The TSA says the Secure Flight system will be in effect for all domestic flights by mid-2010 and all international flights by the end of 2010, at which time the latest two-hour notification rule will become moot (since the airlines will no longer be responsible). Meanwhile, in the case of Shahzad, Kahn says it’s important to remember that the current system — for all its perceived faults related to his near escape — ultimately did what it was meant to do.”

ITBusinessEdge: Baby Steps to Master Data Management

“If you want to start small with master data management, you’ve got to start with a noun, says Evan Levy, a partner at Baseline Consulting  and an instructor with The Data Warehousing Institute… The problem is, IT doesn’t think in nouns. IT is all about the verb: Defining, coding, testing, supporting. What’s more, IT departments tend to view the world in terms of projects – fulfilling this feature request, upgrading to this release, migrating to this server.”

Liliendahl on Data Quality: Aadhar (or Aadhaar)

“In Denmark we have had such an identifier (one for citizens and one for companies) for many years. It is not used by everyone everywhere – so you still are able to make money being a data quality professional specializing in data matching. The main reason that the unique citizen identifier is not used all over is of course privacy considerations.”

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 Community Impact: Controversial fusion center moves forward

“The center is not yet operating, but by as early as midsummer it will be one of more than 70 working fusion centers across the country collecting data from financial, health care, retail, energy, electronic and education sectors.”

The News Tribune: Sumner clerk arrested in undercover Lottery sting

“The ticket indicated it was a winner, and that the person who possessed it was due $20,000, Coe said. But an employee told the compliance officer the ticket was worth a $50 payout, Coe said. The woman kept the ticket after giving the Lottery employee $50, she said. On Monday, the store employee and a companion tried to claim the $20,000 ticket at Washington’s Lottery headquarters on Fourth Avenue in Olympia, according to Coe. Lottery officials called Olympia police, and officers arrested the two women.”

HSToday: Secure Flight On-Budget and On-Time

“The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) generally has fulfilled congressional requirements for bringing the Secure Flight program in for a landing on budget and on schedule, congressional investigators reported Tuesday.”

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[Post from Infoglide] Medicaid Fraud In the News

“Medicaid is in the news almost daily, as states take steps to crack down on fraudulent claims. For example, Maryland is in the process of passing stiffer laws to support its efforts to reduce the 5-10% of fraudulent claims made that draw from the $6.2 billion it pays out annually. Other states like Texas, New Jersey, New York, Florida, and Missouri  as well as the District of Columbia are enacting new laws and supporting stronger efforts to catch fraudulent claims. How are fraudsters caught?”

LegislativeGazette.com: GOP outlines plans to tackle Medicaid fraud

“Sen. George Winner Jr., R-Elmira, said the Medicaid system was clearly out of control, but there are some possibilities that are coming to light, such as the use of proper data analysis technology that would give localities and the state the ability to get a handle on the system. ‘The technology is there,’ said Winner, ‘and the technology can be utilized to bring this monster under control, saving taxpayers millions if not billions of dollars.’”

Federal Computer Week: GAO on board with Secure Flight plans

“TSA was working with 74 U.S. air carriers and 19 foreign carriers on the program as of March 31, according to the report. Secure Flight had so far assumed the watch-list matching function for 39 U.S. air carriers for domestic flights only, and for 5 foreign air carriers for international flights departing to and from the United States, according to TSA, GAO said.”

The Miami Herald: Miami-Dade clinic operator pleads guilty to Medicare fraud

“Between 2005 and 2007, he and his partners raked in $22 million from the taxpayer-funded healthcare program. Marquez, a Miami-Dade resident who could face more than 20 years in prison, ranks as a big spender among the hundreds of local Medicare-licensed operators accused of ripping off the government program for the elderly and disabled.”

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By the Infoglide Team

Liliendahl on Data Quality: What is a best-in-class match engine?

“I don’t think anyone knows what product is the best match engine, because I don’t think that all match engines have been benchmarked with a representative set of data.”

ITBusinessEdge: SOA Spending on the Rise. Surprised? Here’s Why

“It’s important to realize that SOA is really a rather loose collection of best practices. It’s not necessarily a well-defined list where you have some checklist of things to do SOA and if you miss one, you’re not doing SOA. What’s happening is architecture teams are incorporating SOA best practices into various other initiatives.”

BTNonline.com: TSA To Assume All Watchlist Matching For U.S. Carriers By June, All Carriers By January

“The U.S. Transportation Security Administration is on track to assume watchlist matching from all U.S. carriers by the end of May, only slightly behind its March 31 U.S. implementation target for the Secure Flight passenger prescreening system, according to a U.S. Government Accountability Office report. The Secure Flight program also calls for TSA to assume watchlist matching from foreign carriers, and the agency already is working with 19 airlines outside the United States to do so. Five of those carriers are fully functional within the program, and an additional 14 are testing, GAO reported.”

[video] KENS5.com: UT Health Science Center helps bring medicine into computer age

“Currently 80 to 90 percent of all medical records are stored on paper.  The goal is that have an electronic health record for everyone in the U.S. by 2014. Electronic health records are expected to greatly reduce the number of medical errors, which is significant.  Each year in the United States, as many as 100,000 people die in hospitals because of such errors.  That’s the equivalent of one major airline crash every single day of every single year.”

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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] 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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