The core problem of managing structured data as records

I read once, that the only thing that happens when we don't talk about politics, money and religion, is that we get really bad at talking about politics, money and religion.

The reason is pretty simple, we stop learning about them, and we forget the intricacies of what they are, and how to talk about them.

We stop banging our ideas about them up against one another, and introducing new information about context.

The biggest problem with managing structured data as records is kind of the same thing.

We've stopped talking about what a record is, so we've got really bad at talking about what a record is.

We've forgotten how to think about the intricacies of records, how to make good ones, how to relate them to their legislative requirements, how to deal with the challenges of lumping and splitting, competing legislative and conflicting priorities.

What this means, is that now we can't tell solution architects and other people who design business applications what the record in their application is.

So they can't build a solution to manage them the way we want them managed.

I keep finding that when I can tell smart technical people what the record is, they can work out the technicalities of managing it the way we want things managed.

When i can't tell them, they can't.

Because they don't understand records.

That's our job.