The Causes, Costs and Consequences of Bad Government Data [Governing.com]

Data is the lifeblood of state government. It's the crucial commodity that's necessary to manage projects, avoid fraud, assess program performance, keep the books in balance and deliver services efficiently. But even as the trend toward greater reliance on data has accelerated over the past decades, the information itself has fallen dangerously short of the mark. Sometimes it doesn't exist at all. But worse than that, all too often it's just wrong.

[For more of this story, written by Katherine Barrett and Richard Greene, go to http://www.governing.com/topic...mt/gov-bad-data.html]