An Informing Service Based on Models Defined by Its Clients

The developments of the transdiscipline Informing Science not only furnish useful criteria for those creating or offering informing services, but also result in a new responsibility associated with them. Checking the information quality features of the processes involved provides many suggestions to improve the resulting service. The paper describes an informing service for agribusinesses that will offer information about the impact of changes in real world data on their businesses, rather than just report these changes. A customer formulates a mathematical model which includes real world variables – representing external data relevant to his business – as well as his own variables. The service will implement ways to obtain up-to-date values for the variables offered to its customers, typically through intelligent agents or information brokers. The impact of changes in values of the external variables on other variables results from an execution of the model. The client may query his data, but also can define situations in which the he wishes to be warned, with some degree of urgency, that something happened which merits an action or decision on his part. These alarms are delivered through an email or a text message. The components of the service are described. Different attributes of the information’s quality were examined, and changes in the design to comply with them improved the informing service.