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Ten top tips to shine a light on dark data in facilities management – and find value in it

How businesses can benefit from finally taking control of the great unknown
By John Culkin, Director of Information Management, Crown Records Management
Just hearing the words ‘dark data’ can be enough for managers in the FM sector to feel a little uneasy – but despite its rather menacing name there has never been a better time to tackle the phenomenon head on.
When you think of the recent explosion in data it’s hardly surprising that businesses worry about how dark data – defined as ‘information assets that organisations collect, process and store during regular business activities, but generally fail to use for other purposes’ – will affect them in future.
So why are so few doing anything about it?
Rather than shy away from the challenges ahead the big questions we need to be asking in facilities management are: how do you get dark data under control and how can you derive benefit from it?
The threats provided by an explosion in data are obvious; businesses which don’t know what information they have or how to find it are opening themselves up to the possibility of a data breach and in danger of falling foul of data protection regulation as it continues to evolve.
In FM the problem is particularly acute. Buildings are increasingly becoming smart or intelligent which means they produce a lot of data. And as the Internet of Things takes hold there will be even more created as everyday objects in the workplace gain network connectivity, allowing them to send and receive data. This will become an increasingly serious issue for facilities managers, both in terms of how much it costs to store and the inherent risks it contains.
However, by finding and exposing the data and finding all the places it hides, easy gains can be realised, too. The bottom line is organisations need to know what dark data is and where it is. If you don’t understand it how can you possibly be in control of it, let alone realise value hidden in it?
The problem is that hiding dark data away seems to be not just planned but instinctive, as if it were down to human nature. People fill their attics and garages with ‘useful’ things that could be needed in the future. The corporate equivalent is when people say ‘keep the data just in case’. How much money around the world is wasted due to those few words?
Perhaps data is being kept ‘in case it is needed in the future’ – assuming it can be found at the time of need, of course. Or because a company believes some unknown future insight can be found using future analytical technology.
Perhaps it is stored away out of a mistaken belief that keeping more data means a company is less likely to lose something. Or because a business believes data is like a rare book and its monetary and nostalgic value might increase.
All of these misconceptions lead a hoarding of dark data which is unnecessary, not useful and inherently risky. Having a proper information management system in place to prevent the storage of too much dark data is crucial.
Here, then, are some pointers for facilities managers on how to store less dark data and how to find the value in what is kept:
Top tips to prevent dark data accumulating – and then to derive benefit from it
Perhaps the first place to start for business owners and facility managers is to understand what they want to achieve with the data and who it actually belongs to. If no one analyses the data it can simply accumulate and remain unused.
Consider that different systems produce different formats and can be integrated in different ways. So, without a holistic view of a property many advantages will be lost.
- Don’t accept that because data storage is cheap everything can be kept. Charge cost centres for storage. If it’s free, the data addiction will only grow and there is little incentive to reduce it.
- Develop policies and continuous training for all staff about managing data (including data on local drives, laptops, shared drives, removable devices and mobile devices).
- Understand which regulations require what data to be kept for how long. Don’t keep it longer than necessary unless clear benefit can be derived from it.
- Don’t believe all data in enough volume is “Big Data” and therefore has value. Much of it will not be useful in big data projects, especially as it’s often unstructured and in various formats.
- Use File Level Analysis software, to analyse the content of data rather than just its creation and expiry date. It can help a business understand information content, type, size and location.
- Map data sources generated by internal systems or received from external sources – this is about documenting ‘where’ and ‘why’ the data lives and how it was derived.
- Have an Information Governance programme in place supported by the most senior management levels and practiced every day.
- Talk and communicate with people because not everything will be officially documented or known about. Work-arounds and short-term fixes often become routine in the business place, so make people aware of the impact of not being able to manage everyone’s data effectively – it affects everyone.
Only after taking these steps can business owners and facilities managers begin to find, understand and derive benefit from data they previously looked on as nothing more than an expensive waste product – and reduce costs and risks by storing less in the first place. Shining a light on dark data is just the start – but it’s a very good start.
www.crownrms.com