Re: Total Information Quality and Data Quality?

mAsterdam wrote:

> 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

Hmm, I never thought it's possible to find disparate definitions for these terms. Do you have an example?

> 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.

Ok, this is right. But if you seperate both notions like this, is it possible that correct data also lead to wrong decisions?

> Focus on data quality would still try to get the data right, focus on
> information quality would not.

This is hard to understand for me... what is the main focus on information quality? It's possible to ignore the data foundation and find other ways to enhance IQ? Which ways?

> 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.

That is, more information lead to complicating decision-making because there're more things to concern/think about? Even if all information (or better data, can "information" be relevant?!) is relevant and usable? I thought it's also possible to clearify things if more information is available (e.g. to eleminate ambiguities).

>> 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 :-)

:-)

Jan Received on Mon May 24 2004 - 12:02:31 CEST