data hygiene
(day.tuh HY.jeen)
n.
Principles and practices that serve to maintain accuracy in computer data.
Example Citation:
"Data hygiene — the art of keeping a direct mail database clean and up-to-date — could prove to be the most irritating new buzzword of 2001. But it could be key to the success of direct mail printers."
—"Data hygiene to be your 2001 buzzword," Printing World, January 8, 2001
Earliest Citation:
Thus, when moving legacy data, users should have some means of 'scrubbing' the data to ensure that the data getting across to the client/server system has some value. Several approaches are available to help users. Meta data tools, while invaluable for helping IS analysts understand the data relationships, do little to ensure data hygiene.
—Avery Jenkins, "One Bit at a Time," Computerworld, February 5, 1995
Notes:
Despite the above citation's claim that data hygiene is a "new buzzword of 2001," it appears as though this phrase first saw the light of print in 1995.
