Potholes in the Road to Information Quality

hen spring finally comes to New England, it brings with it gaping holes in roads. The larger of these potholes are patched, but the road can never be made smooth again. Smaller potholes, although a daily nuisance, are often not repaired at all. Something similar is happening in the area of information systems: People who need information to accomplish their tasks are finally being provided with easy online access to relevant information. But the information highway has potholes. Like New England drivers in the spring, information consumers must dodge quality problems, large and small, in their quest for high-quality information. Like road crews, the people who produce, store, and maintain information achieve minimal quality through a never-ending process of patching rather than repairing potholes. These potholes along the path from collecting raw data to providing useful information are caused by what we call information quality (IQ) problems. We use the term “information” to refer to both data and information. “Data” usually refers to information at its early stages of processing, and “information” the product at a later stage. Rather than switching between terms, we use “information” to refer to data or information values at any point in the process.