ABSTRACT
Clearly the accurate and rapid communication of management data is an essential part of control, whether for business-as-usual operations, for a single project or for a combination of work in programmes and portfolios. All people working in projects should be aware of the various breakdown structures from which project, programme and portfolio codes are derived. Immediate access to information from the portfolio database is usually technically possible by everyone in an organization, whomever and wherever they may be. The enterprise portfolio management office (EPMO) can arrange for the various database users to have access only to data that are relevant to them. A database will not manage itself. The EPMO is a clear candidate for making sure that data entries and changes are valid and free from errors. But there are also some serious considerations to be given to the stability and security of the database system, in particular guarding against external intrusions and system malfunctions.
