Information Quality

Information Quality

Information Quality

Introduction

In today's world where information plays an important role for the efficient and effective conduct of business operations, the significance of information quality has increased tremendously. Information quality can be defined significantly in two ways: inherent quality and the pragmatic quality. Inherent quality is mainly concerned with the accuracy and correctness of information whereas the pragmatic quality involves the value the correct and accurate data possesses that could support in the business operations (Ravichandran and Lertwongsatien, 2005, pp. 237-276).

It should be noted that the data or information that has no value for the business is of no quality, despite its accuracy or correctness, for the enterprise. This paper aims at defining the information quality, while exploring other concepts associated with it. The paper also attempts to determine how information impacts organisational productivity.

Discussion

Definition of Information Quality

Inherent information quality, in simplest terms, is the accuracy of data. This type of information quality generally represents the degree to which the information in hand accurately represents an object or action of the real world as the data is abstraction or reflection of something that exists in reality. Pragmatic information quality, on the other hand, is the degree to which the data or information in hand is useful or beneficial for the enterprise in terms of achieving its short term and long term goals and objectives (Reeves and Bednar, 1994, pp. 419-445).

In essence, pragmatic information quality can be understood as a degree of customer satisfaction that is derived by workers who rely upon and utilize this information to perform their day to day tasks. For instance, data stored in database or in a data warehouse possess no actual value; rather this type of data only has a potential value as long as it is accessed by a knowledge worker. ...