Re: Total Information Quality and Data Quality?

Jan Moeller wrote:

> ... This made me thinking about a very basic question.
> I know the difference between "Data" and "Information",

It may help you to make your understanding of this distinction explicit. If you randomly pick some disparate definitions for data and information, chances are you are going to have some unneccessary loops in your definitions. For now I'll make an assumption as to what you'll come up with and speculate on that :-) You might say something like: information is what the receptor of communications receives in order to decide/act, while data would be all meaningfull stuff that is available. This is just for what I want to say next, it might not suit your needs.

> but what is the difference between
> Data Quality and Information Quality (and further on "Total Information
> Quality Management" (TIQM) and "Total Data Quality Management" (TQDM),
> see the MIT Total Data Quality Program at http://web.mit.edu/tdqm)?

Wrong data may yet lead to correct decisions and actions. Focus on data quality would still try to get the data right, focus on information quality would not.

More data is just more data. More information leads, explosively, to complicating the making of decisions. The key difference here is relevancy. In other words: information overload is a IQ problem, not a DQ problem.

> Can Information Quality and Data Quality be considered synonyms, because
> quality information always relies on quality data? The above article
> refers to "Data quality" and e.g. "Data cleaning software". I already
> searched Google, but despite hundreds of texts about the difference
> between data and information there were no information about a
> difference between Data Quality and Information Quality. Am I right with
> my assumption or am I totally wrong?

Though IMO they are not synonyms, in most discussions they are used interchangeably. I guess that means you are both right and wrong :-)

Aside: a few weeks ago I posted this on c.d.theory (some relevance to DQ):

> What information is lost at capture-time?
>
> 1. reference to information not already available.
>
> 2. information that doesn't fit the existing structure.
>
> Number 1 needs additional reference information,
> 2 needs a change of model.
> Both may be to cumbersome.
>
> 3. information contradicting information already available.
>
> 4. loss due to mistakes, sometimes caused by (4a) interface inadequacies.
>
> 5. loss due to "minimal input to get the job done"
> (not caring about the shared data).

Data capture is often a side effect of a process where some actor tries to achieve a goal, entering data not being the goal. The use of the word 'information' here was deliberate.

HTH. Received on Sun May 23 2004 - 11:32:11 CEST