The hard responses referred to in this chapter are relatively easy to implement and can all have a role in improving data quality. However, they are likely to produce few or no improvements unless supported by action on soft issues-especially stakeholder motivation and the power relationships underlying motivation.
Why for example, do so many public agencies keep failing to properly implement basic hard general and application controls? Because they are unaware of such controls? No. Because there are insufficient incentives to motivate staff to implement such controls effectively? Yes.
This therefore suggest the need for a hybrid approach to data quality in the public sector. Public managers must adopt not just the easy yet relatively ineffective hard solutions, but also the more difficult yet more fundamental soft solutions. They also need to adopt a set of hybrid solutions that sit at the interface between people and technology: representing the socio-technical component of hybrid approaches.