Black Books: Identifying and Managing Rogue Data Sources

All groups within GOC Departments and Agencies rely (to a degree) on rogue data sources (sometimes called black books). These are typically composed of Microsoft Excel spreadsheets compromised of copied and adjusted enterprise data, home grown Access databases, or data stored in specific analysis applications. In this module, we identify strategies for:

• performing an audit to create a list of black books
• understanding the forces driving their creation and ongoing maintenance
• reducing their number and relative importance
• migrating to more robust enterprise data sources