{"id":390,"date":"2013-04-30T12:39:00","date_gmt":"2013-04-30T16:39:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2015-11-30T08:49:15","modified_gmt":"2015-11-30T13:49:15","slug":"the-essentials-of-identification-codes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jeremy-wu.info\/?p=390","title":{"rendered":"The Essentials of Identification Codes"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Big Data promises to improve governance of society and better inform the public in the 21st century. \u00a0Although every data record has some information to contribute, linking and merging relevant electronic records can minimize the collection of duplicate data and increase the value and utility of the integrated data rapidly and exponentially. \u00a0Essential in this approach is the presence of identification codes that will facilitate the actual integration of record and data.<\/p>

The identification code is a key to unlocking the enormous power in Big Data.\u00a0 However, it may also be the primary cause of system failures, misuses and abuses, and even fraudulent or criminal activities, if it is not properly applied and managed.\u00a0 In addition to technology, statistical design and quality feedback loops, proper education and training, relevant policies and regulations, and public awareness are all needed for the effective and responsible use of identification codes and Big Data.<\/p>\n

The Need for Identification Codes<\/strong><\/h4>

When a student enters a school, a record will store the student\u2019s name, gender, age, family background, field of study, and other data.\u00a0 When she takes a course and receives a final grade, the results are recorded.\u00a0 When she satisfies all the requirements for graduation, another record will show the grade point average she has achieved and the degree she is awarded.<\/p>

Each record represents a snapshot for the student.\u00a0 The records are collected over time for administrative purposes.\u00a0 Together the longitudinal snapshots provide comprehensive information about the education of a student.<\/p>

When the student enters the workforce, additional data are collected over her lifetime about the industry and occupation she works in, the job she performs, the wages and promotions she receives, the taxes and insurances she pays, and the employment or unemployment status she is in.<\/p>

In like manner, massive amounts of data are collected about a firm, including its initial registration as a business, periodic reports on revenues and expenses, entry into the stock markets, acquisitions or mergers with other companies, payment of taxes and fees, growth in sales and staffing, and expansion or death of the business.<\/p>

These administrative records used to be stored in dusty file cabinets, but they are now mostly digitized and available for computer processing when the Big Data era arrived at the turn of the millennium.<\/p>

Timely and proper integration of the records of all students would provide unprecedented details about how the school is performing, such as its graduation or dropout rate over time.\u00a0 Further roll up of all schools would inform a nation about its state of education, such as its capacity to support employment and economic growth.\u00a0 This is what Big Data promises to bring in the 21st century.\u00a0 From allocation of resources, measurement of performance, to formulation of policy, every segment of society can benefit from the details and insights of Big Data to improve governance and inform the public.<\/p>

Although every data record has some information to contribute, linking and merging relevant electronic records minimizes the collection of duplicate data and increases the value and utility of the integrated data exponentially. \u00a0Essential in this approach is the presence of identification codes that will facilitate the actual integration of record and data.\u00a0 Statisticians can make significant contributions to building new statistical systems with their thinking and methods in this process.<\/p>\n

Types of Identification Codes<\/strong><\/h4>

The name of an individual or a company was the preferred identification code when files were still physical, such as in paper form.\u00a0 It has been conventional to consolidate records under the same name and sort them by alphabetical order in English, number of strokes in Chinese, or chronological order.<\/p>

However, a major shortcoming of using names, especially when processed massively by computer, is that they are not unique. \u00a0The top four family names of Lee, Wang, Zhang, and Liu accounted for 334 million individuals in China in 2006 [1], exceeding the total U.S. population.\u00a0 Chinese names may also appear differently because of the simplified and traditional characters.\u00a0 The English first name of Robert, the 61st most popular male name at birth in the U.S. in 2011 [2,3], can have at least 7 common variations for the same person, including Bert, Bo, Bob, Bobby, Rob, Robbie, and Robby.\u00a0 Bert may also be short for Albert.\u00a0 Individuals may apply to change their names or use more than one name; women may change their names after marriage.\u00a0 Human errors can add errant names.\u00a0 References to the same name across nations with different languages can be notoriously difficult.<\/p>

The name of a company is usually checked and validated to avoid duplication during the registration process and protected by applicable local, national and international rules and laws including trademarks after registration.\u00a0 The company may use multiple names including abbreviations and stock market symbols; it can also change its name due to merger with another company, acquisition agreement, reorganization, or a simple desire to change its brand.<\/p>

A non-unique identification code poses the risk of linking and merging records incorrectly, leading to incorrect results or conclusions.\u00a0 Supplementing a name with auxiliary information, such as age, gender, and an address, would reduce but not eliminate the chance of record mismatches, and at the cost of increasing processing time.<\/p>

A series of numbers, letters and special characters (alphanumeric) or a series of numbers alone (numeric) is increasingly used as the identification code of choice with modern machine sorting, linking, and merging of electronic records.\u00a0 Numeric codes tend to be less restrictive because they are independent of the writing system.\u00a0 Alphanumeric codes using letters from the English alphabet may be suitable for systems using languages based on the Latin alphabet, but systems using non-Latin scripts may still find them unavailable or difficult to use, understand, or interpret.\u00a0 It is also easier to understand how numeric codes are sorted compared to alphanumeric codes.<\/p>

When the Social Security Act of 1935 was passed in the U.S., one of the first challenges in implementation was to create an identification code that would \u201cpermanently identify each individual to be covered\u201d and \u201cbe sufficiently elastic to function indefinitely as additional workers became covered\u201d [4].\u00a0 An 8-field alphanumeric code was initially chosen, but it was soon rejected by the statistical agencies, as well as labor and justice departments. \u00a0\u00a0This exchange was described [4,5] as the first sign of \u201cthe tremendous impact machines would have on the way [government] would do business.\u201d\u00a0 This was BEFORE computers were introduced for actual use.<\/p>

Today, the impact of information technology is obvious and continues to increase in every aspect of government, business, and individual activities.\u00a0 An identification code may be applied to a person, a company, a vehicle, a credit card, a cargo, en email account, a location, or just about any practical entity.<\/p>

An electronic record that does not contain an identification code or cannot be correctly linked with other records may be described as lacking in \u201cstructure\u201d or \u201cunstructured\u201d in the Big Data era.\u00a0 Since the beginning of the 21stcentury, \u201cunstructured\u201d data are occurring in much higher frequency than \u201cstructured\u201d data.\u00a0 However, they contain relatively limited information content and utility compared to \u201cstructured\u201d data, especially for continuing, consistent, and reliable information about a society or an economy over time.<\/p>

Effective use of the identification code is a key to unlocking the enormous power inherent in Big Data.<\/p>\n

Effective Use of Identification Codes<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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  1. Match and Merge Records.\u00a0<\/strong> Ideal identification codes are mutually exclusive and exhaustive, establishing an unambiguous one-to-one relationship between the code and the entity, including those yet to appear in the future.\u00a0 The code facilitates direct and perfect machine sorting, matching, and merging of electronic records, potentially increasing the amount of information about the entity with no limit.<\/li>\n
  2. Anonymize and Protect Identity.\u00a0<\/strong> A code offers the first-line protection of identity by anonymizing the entity.\u00a0 Due to the increasing importance of the code and the relative ease of linking with other records, the risks and stakes of identity fraud or theft through the identification code have also risen, requiring responsible policy and management of the code as safeguards.<\/li>\n
  3. Provide Basic Description and Classification. \u00a0<\/strong>An identification code can provide the most basic description of the content and context of the data records, from which simple observations or summaries can be quickly derived.\u00a0 Over time, this concept also evolved into codes for classification and the separate development of \u201cmetadata\u201d [6,7] for efficiently building structure into data systems and broadening their use across systems.<\/li>\n
  4. Perform Initial Quality Check.<\/strong>\u00a0 Unintentional human errors in typing or transcribing an identification code incorrectly may damage the quality of integrated data and the eventual analytical results.\u00a0 Fraudulent or malicious altering of the identification codes may inflict even more severe damage to the integrity and reliability of the data.\u00a0 Early detection with the deployment of \u201ccheck digit\u201d [8,9] in the identification code may eliminate more than 90 percent of these common errors.<\/li>\n
  5. Facilitate Statistical Innovations.<\/strong>\u00a0 By collecting and integrating data continuously for each entity such as a student, a dynamic frame with rich content can be built for all students and all schools.\u00a0 New data elements may be defined for analysis; statistical summaries may be produced in real time or according to set schedules to describe the performance of a school or the state of education for a nation, while strictly protecting the confidentiality of individuals and security of their data.\u00a0\u00a0 Innovative efforts to construct these dynamic frames, or longitudinal data systems, have started in the U.S. and China [10].\u00a0 The Data Quality Campaign [11] lists \u201ca unique statewide student identifier that connects student data across key databases across years\u201d to be the top essential element in building state longitudinal data systems for education in the U.S.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Personal Identification Codes of the U.S. and China<\/strong><\/h4>

    The U.S. does not have a national identification system. The Social Security Number (SSN) was created to track earnings of workers in the U.S. in 1936, before computers were introduced for commercial use.\u00a0 Its transition into the computer age revealed some of the strengths and weaknesses of its evolving role as an identification code.<\/p>

    The 9-digit SSN is composed of 3 parts:<\/p>\n

    \"U.S.<\/a>
    U.S. Social Security Card<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n