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What If Information Came with a Chain of Evidence?
I noticed this article about bar codes and specific data elements in annual reports and such – and it had me thinking. Wouldn’t it be cool if reports started to move to being more entirely online and available for drill-down and validation of information presented? The specific use of the bar codes in the information presented makes it easier to analyze data – but it would be cool if:
– you could scan a number’s code and get the underlying data, imported into your excel sheet…
– you could scan a number’s code and get a drill-down report
– you could scan a number’s bar code and find out how the number was derived – what values were behind it, what formulas were used to create it.
– you could scan a number’s bar code and see who’s modified the number and include/exclude specific individual’s changes (a chain of trusted editors)
Somehow we have to have the information behind the information – it’ll be quite the task to make this apply to a wide audience of users, both from a preparation and a reader standpoint. The benefits though would be great. You could start to define the equations you extended trust to, the editors and the data. You could also more easily catch novel (new) uses of information and look for exceptions in how the information was handled. It might not be a problem that a new process was applied, but it could be something you want to review, for sure.
The big thing would need to be though that information generated it’s own "bread crumbs," not that it had to be manually or programmatically recreated or applied along the way. Sure would be nice.
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