overrapportage

Overrapportage is a term used in Dutch to describe the practice of providing more reporting, data, or information than necessary or useful, resulting in information overload. It is encountered in public administration, corporate governance, healthcare, journalism, and data analytics.

Causes include a culture that emphasizes exhaustive transparency, proliferation of performance metrics, automated reporting systems that generate numerous fields, and stakeholder pressure to disclose more.

Effects can include wasted resources, slower decision-making, dilution of important data, and reduced trust in reporting.

Examples include monthly dashboards with dozens of metrics and regulatory reports containing redundant fields.

Prevention and management involve defining a clear purpose for each report, identifying a small set of key indicators (KPIs), implementing tiered or targeted reporting, using data visualization to summarize data, and periodically reviewing the necessity of each metric.

See also: information overload, data governance, reporting burden, transparency.