Public Data

Suppose a spreadsheet contains data that would be useful in many places throughout the corporation. As long as the spreadsheet remains as a spreadsheet, it will have limited accessibility among the many people in the corporation. Only a few people will know about the spreadsheet. And since the spreadsheet is essentially private, suboptimal care is taken to make sure its values are correct.

In the case of information that is valuable beyond just a few people, there is incentive for the spreadsheet to be transformed into corporate data. And of course, as there evolves a widespread audience using the spreadsheet data, the veracity of the data found on the spreadsheet becomes of great importance.

Usually the places where data is needed publicly are found within the same corporation. Only occasionally is there a need to share spreadsheet data with institutions outside the corporation, when the motivation for transforming the spreadsheet data is to make the spreadsheet...