When I work with my clients on a data management projects, there are frequently conversations about querying and reporting on data. I'll hear things like "We want to query for people who have attended previous meetings and are also volunteers, but we're not able to pull that information."

The first question I ask is: "Is that data IN the system now?" In other words, do we have attendance data and volunteer data? Is the issue that we don't have the data, or is the issue that we can't easily access the data we have?

I've run into situations where the data IS in the database, but because of the architecture of the system, the data can't be queried (or can't be queried in conjunction with other data points also in the system). In those cases, the issue is not the data, but the technology. And workarounds have to be developed in order to extract and use the data.

However, I often find that what is being sought is data the association hasn't actually collected, or it is in another system (typically spreadsheets!). In the example above, it might be that we have all the meeting data in one system, and the volunteer data in another system (or not at all). So querying for it really isn't possible.

So when faced with "I can't report on that data," always first ask "Is the issue the data or the technology?"