Data Quality & Integrity Statement

Owner: [DPO Name] (CTO/Cyber Lead) Scope: Standard 1.6 (Data Quality) & 1.7 (Data Validation)

1. Quality at Entry (Validation)

CheckTick prevents "Garbage In, Garbage Out" through multi-layered validation:

  • Type Enforcement: Django form fields enforce data types (e.g., IntegerFields for scores, DateFields for DOB).
  • Regex Validation: Specific formats (like NHS Numbers or Postcodes) are validated via Regular Expressions before being accepted.
  • Choice Constraints: Surveys use choices and RadioButtons to prevent free-text errors in clinical scoring.
  • Mandatory Fields: Logic ensures that critical clinical safety questions cannot be skipped.

2. Technical Integrity (No Corruption)

To ensure data is not corrupted during processing or storage:

  • ACID Compliance: Our PostgreSQL database ensures transactions are Atomic, Consistent, Isolated, and Durable.
  • Relational Constraints: Foreign Key constraints ensure that a response cannot exist without being linked to a specific survey and user.
  • Encryption Integrity: AES-256-GCM (Galois/Counter Mode) provides 'Authenticated Encryption,' meaning if a single bit of the encrypted data is tampered with or corrupted, the decryption will fail rather than return incorrect data.

3. Regular Data Quality Audits

As part of our Bi-Annual Spot Checks, the SIRO and CTO perform:

  1. Schema Review: Ensuring field lengths and types are still appropriate for the data being collected.
  2. Review of "Other" Fields: Analyzing free-text 'Other' inputs to see if new standardized categories should be added to improve future data quality.
  3. Accuracy Check: Comparing a sample of raw database entries against the exported UI view to ensure zero transformation errors.