Trouble with the Terrorist Watch List Database
“Trouble with the Terrorist Watch List Database”
CASE STUDY QUESTIONS
1. What concepts in this chapter are illustrated in this case? The concept illustrated in this case is about consolidating multiple databases into a single strong list. Furthermore, agencies are using data warehouses to queried information gather by all government departments. Agencies can receive a data mart, a subset of data, which pertains to its specific task. For instance, airlines use data supplied by the TSA system in their NoFly and Selectee lists for prescreening passengers, while the U.S. Customs and Border Protection system uses the watch list data to help screen travelers entering the United States. Managing data resources effectively and efficiently is very important in this case. No information policy has been established to specify the rules for sharing, disseminating, acquiring, standardizing, classifying, and inventorying information. Data administration seems to be poor. Data governance that would help the organizations manage the availability, usability, integrity, and security of the data seems to be missing. It would help increase the privacy, security, data quality, and compliance with government regulations. Lastly, data quality audits and data cleansing are desperately needed to decrease the number of inconsistent record counts, duplicate records, and records that lacked data fields or had unclear sources for the data.
2. Why was the consolidated terror watch list created? What are the benefits of the list? The FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center, or TSC, was established to organize information about suspected terrorists between multiple government agencies into a single list to enhance communications between agencies. A database of suspected terrorists known as the terrorist watch list was born from these efforts in 2003 in response to criticisms that multiple agencies were maintaining separate lists and that these agencies lacked a consistent process to share
CASE STUDY QUESTIONS
1. What concepts in this chapter are illustrated in this case? The concept illustrated in this case is about consolidating multiple databases into a single strong list. Furthermore, agencies are using data warehouses to queried information gather by all government departments. Agencies can receive a data mart, a subset of data, which pertains to its specific task. For instance, airlines use data supplied by the TSA system in their NoFly and Selectee lists for prescreening passengers, while the U.S. Customs and Border Protection system uses the watch list data to help screen travelers entering the United States. Managing data resources effectively and efficiently is very important in this case. No information policy has been established to specify the rules for sharing, disseminating, acquiring, standardizing, classifying, and inventorying information. Data administration seems to be poor. Data governance that would help the organizations manage the availability, usability, integrity, and security of the data seems to be missing. It would help increase the privacy, security, data quality, and compliance with government regulations. Lastly, data quality audits and data cleansing are desperately needed to decrease the number of inconsistent record counts, duplicate records, and records that lacked data fields or had unclear sources for the data.
2. Why was the consolidated terror watch list created? What are the benefits of the list? The FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center, or TSC, was established to organize information about suspected terrorists between multiple government agencies into a single list to enhance communications between agencies. A database of suspected terrorists known as the terrorist watch list was born from these efforts in 2003 in response to criticisms that multiple agencies were maintaining separate lists and that these agencies lacked a consistent process to share