Records and the need to reduce uncertainty in decision making.

A large part of decision making is reducing uncertainty.

A lot of decision making comes down to a simple question - "is this thing I want to do going to succeed?"

It's everything - from "how do I make sure my email gets to the right person" to "how do I prove to my bank that I own my house so they will approve my next mortgage."

We are all capable of making educated guesses.

I know that firsname.lastname@organisation.com.au is probably going to get my email to the person I'm aiming for.

But that's not enough certainty for a bank.

It's not enough certainty for anything important.

And realistically, if we can reduce our uncertainty about that email address in any way - it's probably going to be worth the time.

This sounds really trivial.

But Robodebt had this moment.

Someone decided that while they didn't have much certainty about whether most of the people had debts, they'd just send them and see.

If they'd had high-quality records, they wouldn't have sent most of them.

They'd have been able to say with certainty "this person has a debt" and "this person doesn't have a debt" - and they could have acted accordingly.

And we likely would have had a good debt recovery program - instead of the awful disaster that we had.

Anyone making big decisions that impact lots of people wants to reduce uncertainty as far as possible.

How can your records support them?