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Vol. I · No. 251
Mon · 8 Jun
A Daily Lexicon of Trustworthy Data
The Lexicon

005·76

data quality debt

/ˈdeɪ.tə ˈkwɒl.ɪ.ti det/ - n.

1 [colloq.] The interest paid every quarter on the validation skipped to make one deadline two years ago.Keep. Punchy.This is the problem.

Working definition

2. The accumulated future cost of deferred quality work — unfixed defects, skipped validation, and undefined rules — that compounds as systems build on top of it.

Evidence
See also
  • data cleansingRepairing the data instead of the system that keeps breaking it, monthly, in perpetuity.
  • remediation backlogThe list of things everyone agrees are broken, sorted by how long they have been agreed.