Information Quality

Authors: Luciano Floridi

Publish Date: 2013/02/15

Volume: 26, Issue: 1, Pages: 1-6

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Abstract

The most developed postindustrial societies live by information and information and communication technologies keep them oxygenated English 2009 So the better the quality of the information exchanged the more likely such societies and their members may prosper But what is information quality IQ exactly The question has become increasingly pressing in recent years1 Yet our answers have been less than satisfactory so farIn the USA the Information Quality Act also known as the Data Quality Act2 enacted in 2000 left undefined virtually every key concept in the text So it required the Office of Management and Budget “to promulgate guidance to agencies ensuring the quality objectivity utility and integrity of information including statistical information disseminated by Federal agencies” Unsurprisingly the guidelines have received much criticism and have been under review ever since3In the UK some of the most sustained efforts in dealing with IQ issues have concerned the National Health Service NHS Already in 2001 the Kennedy Report4 acknowledged that “All health care is information driven so the threat associated with poor information is a direct risk to the quality of healthcare service and governance in the NHS” However in 2004 the NHS Information Quality Assurance Consultation5 still stressed that “Consideration of information and data quality are made more complex by the general agreement that there are a number of different aspects to information/data quality but no clear agreement as to what these are”Lacking a clear and precise understanding of IQ properties causes costly errors confusion impasse dangerous risks and missed opportunities Part of the difficulty lies in constructing the right conceptual and technical framework necessary to analyse and evaluate them Some steps have been taken to rectify the situation The first International Conference on Information Quality was organised in 19966 In 2006 the Association of Computing Machinery launched the new Journal of Data and Information Quality7 The Data Quality Summit8 now provides an international forum for the study of information quality strategies Pioneering investigations in the 1990s—including Wang and Kon 1992 Tozer 1994 Redman 1996 and Wang 1998—and research programmes such as the Information Quality Program9 at MIT have addressed applied issues plausible scenarios and the codification of best practices So there is already a wealth of available results that could make a difference However such results have had limited impact also because research concerning IQ has failed to combine and crossfertilise theory and practice Furthermore insufficient work has been done to promote the valueadding synthesis of academic findings and technological knowhowA disregard for the fact that any quality evaluation can only happen at a given level of abstraction11 To simplify the quality of a system fit for a particular purpose is analysed at a LoA whose selection is determined by the choice of the purpose in the first place if one wants to evaluate a hammer for the purpose of holding some paper in place on the desk then that purpose determines the LoA which will include for example how clean the hammer is leading to

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